LITD is cheering Rand Paul on with regard to health-care policy

The latest Paul Ryan-driven proposal is too problematic to settle for. While it gets rid of Planned Parenthood funding and the out-and-out tax component, it has at least five basic, glaring shortcomings, as enumerated by Ben Shapiro:

1. It Retains Requirements That Insurance Cover People With Pre-Existing Conditions. The key component to Obamacare was always the nonsensical notion that government could force insurance companies to cover those with pre-existing conditions. This turns insurance companies into piggy banks rather than insurance companies – imagine a fire insurance company that allowed you to buy insurance after your house was on fire. That’s not an insurance company anymore. The same is true in health insurance – and the Republicans’ attempt to preserve this popular provision of Obamacare means that Republicans must also do something to ensure that insurance companies don’t go bankrupt. There are only two ways to do that: with a mandate to buy insurance, or with government subsidies.

2. It Creates A Back Door Mandate. The Republican plan gets rid of the overt Obamacare mandate. But it does allow insurance companies to charge an elevated 30% fine for those whose insurance lapses for more than two months at any point in the last 12 months. This means that you’re essentially fined in the future for not buying insurance now. Which has nothing to do with the Constitutional role of government.

3. It Creates Individual Healthcare Subsidies. The problem is that this back door mandate isn’t enough. What about people who are high risk or have pre-existing conditions, but haven’t bought insurance? We have to give them money to buy health insurance. Which is what the bill does: it includes an advanceable, refundable tax credit based on age. This is effectively a subsidy, since the tax credits apply to people who don’t pay much in taxes, just as the Earned Income Tax Credit is actually a giveaway to people who don’t pay taxes.

4. It Subsidizes Medicaid. The Obamacare boondoggle was sold by allowing the federal government to pick up the tab for Medicaid expansion in the states. This bill would allow the feds to cover Obamacare Medicaid expansion for three years – and there’s no way a future Congress will actually cut these subsidies, fearing political backlash. This is like every other long-promised sunsetted spending program: it’s not going anywhere.

5. It Subsidizes High-Risk Pools On The State Level. The bill sends $100 billion to states over the next ten years to help cover those who are high risk and can’t afford insurance. This, of course, won’t be nearly enough – it incentivizes the state to sign people up, then look to the federal government for more cash.

Enter the junior Senator from Kentucky. He came in for some titters over the stunt last week in which he brought a copy machine to the room where this bill was being crafted, but he felt the need to dramatize his point. And now he sees that it's time for more concrete measures, and enlisting like minds among his colleagues to join him in taking them:

He has joined with Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, along with the House Freedom Caucus in insisting on full repeal of Obamacare's spending, mandates and taxes, instead of the partial repeal the GOP is pursuing, which critics say would leave the country with "Obamacare-lite."

The senator and Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., have introduced their own Obamacare replacement plan, which goes further than the one backed by House Republican leaders and does not rely on refundable tax credits to help people buy health insurance. The bill does contain tax credits to bolster expanded health savings accounts.

A commenter underneath this linked James W. Antle article at the Washington Examiner points out a further stroke of brilliance in Paul's proposal:

The pre-exitsting conditions argument for the ACA becomes a Democrat canard when confronted with Rand Paul's solution allowing anyone and everyone join an association to get group health care that allows them to receive group coverage at the corresponding discounts and ability to switch providers as may be negotiated by their group. No one in a good coverage plan has pre-existing conditions issues except those that unfortunately have to get an individual COBRA plan. Totally brilliant solution by Rand Paul. His expertise as a doctor becomes quite clear and must be explloited to the max.

The only thing I want to hear from any Republican who is uncomfortable with the Rand Paul approach is an attempt at refutation on its merits, not some "pragmatism" crud about what it's possible to get 51 votes with. We've have eight years of such excuses. If this is a good plan - and it is superior to the one Ryan is touting - then sell it with conviction and passion.

This is freedom we're talking about.