The American Health Care Act (HR1628) was pulled from the House floor for lack of support among House Republican conservatives and moderates. The main reason for its failure was it failed to include a repeal of the regulatory architecture of Obamacare that is responsible for the rising cost of health care.
This regulatory architecture is found in Title 1 of Obamacare and includes a number of insurance regulations and mandates such as community ratings, essential health benefits, guarantee issues, actuarial values, among other things.
Taken together, these mandate regulations restrict consumer choice and drive up cost of health care premiums by a national average of 44.5 to 68 percent. By not eliminating the regulatory architecture (Title 1 of Obamacare) made this bill bad health care policy. Also not following through on promises to repeal Obamacare caused bad relationships between House members.
Approval process was flawed as House members were not given sufficient time to review and debate the bill and then there was an all or nothing arbitrary dead line set by the Republican House leadership
Now that the AHCA (HR1628) did not pass due to insufficient votes from different groups, the Republicans have the perfect opportunity to reset the debate and openly negotiate a better bill that completely repeals Obamacare as was promised. Once this is taken care of, then the members can start to work on a workable health care bill that will give choice and lower overall health care cost for the American people.
Helen
