To keep youth vote, Democrats should repeal Obamacare

When House Republicans take up the health insurance law repeal today, they ought to try to get rid of the individual mandate, but more important, they must bring their own solutions to tackle high health care prices.

One obvious answer is to allow individuals to purchase insurance across state lines; more competition among insurance companies would bring down costs. Another one would be getting rid of the tax incentive for employers to cover their employees; more individual purchasers in the market would also increase competition.

A deeper and more challenging reform would target the price controls already manipulating the system in Medicare and Medicaid. Right now, these programs only pay about 83 cents on the dollar of what the private market brings. Considering these programs are estimated to make up about 50 percent of the total health care market, doctors and pharmaceutical companies compensate for these losses by charging their private customers more.

Mr. Obama’s health reform makes Medicaid even bigger, though, adding more price controls and further manipulating the market. We should repeal this change before it happens and address the current systematic flaws with a comprehensive solution. Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, and Rep. Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin have a proposal that removes these price controls, without punishing seniors, by converting to a voucher-based system.

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The president and Democrat-controlled Senate probably will not accept these solutions because it seems like political suicide to undo the work they just completed. But it may be equally suicidal to punish the young people who make up a significant part of their voting base. Democrats ought to consider repealing and replacing Obamacare, or face the backlash of an American youth sobered up to an even harsher fiscal reality.

Ron Meyer is a senior at Principia College. He hosts the “We the People” Internet radio show and is a contributor to The Daily Caller. He has appeared on Fox News, and his writing has been featured in The Christian Science Monitor, Yahoo! News, Human Events, the Santa Barbara News-Press, and AOL News.

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