Health Care Reform Rushed, Rammed Down our Throats? History tells a different story.

Dylan Matthews and Wonkblog compared Paul Ryan's alternative health care reform plan to Obama's and found some amazing similarities. In fact, he put together a chart comparing not just the similarities, but past proposals from previous administrations. From here, I'll let the chart and description do the talking: 

Here’s what Paul Ryan wanted for health care:

Click to enlarge

• States would open health insurance exchanges where individuals and small businesses could buy coverage.

• Insurance plans on the exchanges would have to provide a base level of coverage set by the federal government.

• Insurers couldn't turn down customers, including because of preexisting conditions (guaranteed issue).

• Individuals and families would get a refundable tax credit to pay for insurance.

• That tax credit would be financed in part by limiting the tax exemption on employer-provided insurance.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Those are all sentences that accurately describe both the Patients’ Choice Act and the Affordable Care Act.

The big difference was cost, and possible future spending by patients in the Ryan plan due to rising medical costs:

The Patients’ Choice Act also runs into a problem in that its coverage provisions cost significantly more than Obamacare’s. According to the Tax Policy Center, swapping the employer tax exclusion for a $2,300 per individual, $5,700 per family refundable tax credit, as proposed by the Patients’ Choice Act, would cost $1.7 trillion over 10 years. Obamacare’s coverage provisions, by contrast, cost about $1.2 trillion over 10 years. You’d need to make up that revenue somehow, or else accept bigger structural deficits, for the plan to work.