Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, wrote an op-ed for USA Today in which he explains why the president’s signature health care law will “collapse under its own weight. USA Today,
“You can’t fix a fundamentally broken law; you’ve got to replace it. That’s why Congress can’t save Obamacare with a few tweaks, despite what its defenders say. No quick fix can correct the main flaw: The law takes power away from patients and hands it to bureaucrats…
The worst of the law is yet to come. This year, the individual mandate kicks in for real. Anyone who doesn’t have health insurance in 2015 will have to pay a tax of $325 or 2% of taxable income.
And this year’s tax season will be even more stressful than usual: H&R Block estimates that up to half of the 6.8 million people who got subsidies last year might have to pay some of those subsidies back.
But just because we can’t fix Obamacare doesn’t mean we can’t start to get rid of its worst features. On Thursday, the House will take up a bill to define “full time” as 40 hours per week, so more people can work full time.
Ultimately, the law will collapse under its own weight. Until then, we have to start building a better health care system in its place. And we need to start with a new principle: Put the patient in the driver’s seat. That’s how we can build a healthy economy.”
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