Unless he has a Senate supermajority, Romney can't repeal the regulatory aspects of healthcare reform. Chait looks at what he could do through reconciliation:
If [Romney and congressional Republicans] eliminate the subsidies but leave the regulations in place, you’ll have insurers required to sell policies to people who are sick, but no way to bring healthy people into the risk pool. A few states tried that. It created a cost spiral that collapsed the whole market. Romney would end up screwing the health insurance industry, which is much harder to do, politically, than screwing the uninsured. The industry has lobbyists.
So what is Romney actually proposing? David Frum breaks it down:
Mitt Romney has an interesting idea. Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act enables the secretary of Health and Human Services to grant waivers to states from many ACA regulations.
With a majority of the states challenging ACA before the Supreme Court, there should be no shortage of takers for the waivers.
But as always, there are some catches.
· The waivers are only available for plan years beginning after Jan. 1, 2017.
· The replacement plans must provide benefits at least as generous and at least as affordable as those previously provided by the ACA's mechanisms. The replacement plans must also cover at least as many people.
· The waivers would not save the federal government any money. Subsidies due to individuals within the states under the ACA mechanisms would be granted in a block to the state government.
In other words: President Romney would find himself enforcing President Obama's law for at least three-quarters of his own first term.
Frum goes on to outline his preferred reforms of Obamacare.
The Dish 