This is the last election cycle in which Republicans will try to reap political advantage by promising to repeal Obamacare, agreed Dr. Avik Roy, a conservative healthcare policy expert, and Chris Jennings, who played a key role on healthcare issues in two Democratic administrations. The pair spoke Tuesday at a conference in Washington sponsored by America's Health Insurance Plans.
Roy pointed to recent stumbles by Republican Senate candidates in Kentucky and Arkansas in seeking to explain their stance on popular provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as evidence of how politically tricky the issue has become. He also cited polling data that consistently shows most respondents want the law to be improved rather than repealed.
“I think that's going to evolve in the direction of reform rather than repeal,” said Roy, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Roy has proposed a healthcare overhaul that would gradually migrate Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries into exchanges and require wealthy beneficiaries to pay for coverage in the latter program. He argued that provider consolidation—and the ability of hospitals to dictate prices—needs to be addressed to make the healthcare system financially sustainable.