OAKLAND, CA—The path to affordable, dependable healthcare can’t be built by “repairing” Obamacare, but only by replacing it—with eight steps that emphasize fairness, choice, and the free market.

These eight steps are discussed in “Replacing Obamacare and Insuring the Uninsured,” the new Executive Summary by Independent Institute Senior Fellow John C. Goodman* (President, Goodman Institute; “The Father of Health Savings Accounts”—The Wall Street Journal), along with Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX, Chairman, House Rules Committee), and Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA).

“The following proposals would vastly improve coverage by making health insurance affordable for all and by ensuring access to reliable medical care,” they write in the Executive Summary.
The essential eight steps, which draw from Goodman’s Independent Institute books, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare SystemandA Better Choice: Healthcare Solutions for America, are these:

• Remove the perverse incentives that encourage insurers to seek out healthier customers and avoid sicker ones
• Offer a uniform tax credit to people who buy their own health insurance
• Offer the same tax credit for group insurance
• Let employers choose between the individual and group markets
• Let employers choose the employee’s tax benefit
• Let employers offer their employees personal and portable insurance
• Integrate Medicaid and private insurance
• Create an effective safety net by sending uncollected tax credits to the communities where the uninsured live.

“Under the proposals outlined above, we can achieve a goal the sponsors of the Affordable Care Act promised to reach, but never delivered,” write Goodman, Sessions, and Cassidy.

Healthcare would be made affordable and accessible to all. “And in case some fall through the cracks and remain uninsured, an adequately funded safety net will insure access to medical care,” they write.

The essential eight steps are central to legislation that was introduced in the House and Senate—the Cassidy-Sessions Health Plan (Goodman’s analysis of that bill is here)—and in the Patient Freedom Act, sponsored by Sen. Cassidy. A longer discussion of their proposals was published on the Health Affairs Blog, January 18, 2017.

*John C. Goodman is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and President of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr. Goodman is frequently invited to testify before Congress on healthcare reform, and he is the author of more than fifty studies on health policy, retirement reform and tax issues plus ten books. He regularly appears on television and radio news programs, including those on Fox News Channel, CNN, PBS, and CNBC.

A non-partisan research and educational organization, the Independent Institute promotes the power of independent thinking to boldly advance peaceful, prosperous, and free societies grounded in a commitment to human worth and dignity. For more information, visit www.independent.org.