On a recent episode of The Editors podcast, Rich Lowry and the crew discussed the question of how Republicans should best address the problem of Obamacare’s rising premiums and the upcoming vote, at Democrats’ behest, to permanently extend Biden-era enhanced subsidies for those premiums. While this may seem like a short-term policy quibble, it’s actually a unique and significant opportunity to advance a free-market health-care agenda: specifically, by deregulating Obamacare in exchange for a one-to-two-year phaseout of the enhanced subsidies.
Obamacare premiums have nearly tripled since 2013, and Obamacare’s deductibles have more than doubled over the same time span. The driver of these higher costs isn’t the health law’s subsidies. It’s the law’s insurance regulations, which, under the Senate’s rules, require a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority to roll back. Hence, if Republicans want to make health insurance affordable again, they need a strategy to gain 60 votes in the Senate for Obamacare deregulation: a minimum of eight Democrats to go along with 52 Republicans. In this article, I articulate a path for them to get there.
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