Sunday, September 26, 2010

Podcast: Obamacare at 6 Months; The Republican Health Care Agenda

If Republicans seek to repeal Obamacare, what should they replace it with?


On Friday, I debated Jonathan Cohn, Senior Editor at The New Republic, on Public Radio International’s “To The Point,” hosted by Warren Olney. The program covered the six-month anniversary of the passage of Obamacare, and the Republican health care agenda as defined by the Pledge to America.

The health care segment of the broadcast begins at the 7:30 mark. Olney first brings on Noam Levey, Congressional reporter for the Los Angeles Times, to discuss the PPACA provisions that went into effect last week. Then, Molyann Brodie, pollster for the Kaiser Family Foundation, discusses her polls that suggest that Americans aren’t interested in repealing the law. (These Kaiser surveys suffer from methodological flaws because of the tendentious manner in which they pose their questions; the weekly Rasmussen Obamacare poll does a much better job in this respect.)

At the 23:30 mark, I first appear, along with Jonathan Cohn. I discuss why the “consumer protections” in PPACA will drive up the cost of health insurance, and what Republicans should advocate in PPACA’s place: eliminating the employer tax exclusion, and allowing individuals to buy health insurance for themselves.

Here is the audio of the full 51-minute broadcast (you can fast forward by clicking on the text in the player and dragging the grey bar around):



“To The Point” is broadcast five days a week by KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, California. You can freely subscribe to their podcast via iTunes.

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