Letter: Make fixes to ACA, or go to single-payer

Not surprisingly, the president vetoed a bill that would have repealed much of "Obamacare." When House Speaker Paul Ryan was asked about a GOP alternative, something that has been lacking for more than six years, he said, "Just wait." We all have been waiting.

The GOP was remiss for not participating in a process to repair our broken health care system. The Democrats were remiss for excluding a variety of conservative ideas in the Affordable Care Act.

I would have liked to have seen provisions for tort reform, but I often remind people that the central tenet of the bill was the "individual mandate," first proposed in 1989 by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.

Today, the nation suffers because there are obvious improvements to the ACA, but the GOP won't do it because their mantra is "repeal and replace," and many Democrats won't bother for political reasons, plus they would need bipartisan votes to make reforms.

The GOP has come to realize that insuring those with pre-existing conditions is something appreciated by the electorate, and maybe by a majority of Republicans. But I ask the obvious question: "How can one expect healthy people to buy insurance, if they know they can get it if they need it?"

The Heritage Foundation had it right. If you have universal coverage of those with pre-existing conditions, you must require everyone to participate. It seems we should either keep the ACA, with needed improvements, or go to a single-payer system.

William Griffith

Beaufort

This story was originally published January 20, 2016 at 8:35 AM with the headline "Letter: Make fixes to ACA, or go to single-payer."