Afternoon Must-Read: Jon Cohn: New GOP Health Plan Sounds Exactly Like Old One

Jon Cohn: New GOP Health Plan Sounds Exactly Like Old One: “House Republican leaders have come up with a new health care proposal.

And based on a report in the Washington Post, it will look a lot like their old health care proposals—the ones that would have done very little to improve access, reduce financial distress, and contain health care spending. But this new plan would be different in one key respect. Implementing this sort of Republican plan now would probably mean taking away coverage from quite a lot of people who just got it. That’s a pretty big deal…. The interesting question is how Republicans intend to present this plan…. If Republicans intend to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with the framework that Costa’s story describes—or even something with a bit more money behind it—a lot of those people are going to lose… insurance altogether. Until this year, taking away Obamacare meant taking away a hypothetical benefit. Now that benefit is real…. But really, the policy details are sort of irrelevant here. Notwithstanding the efforts of a few dedicated intellectuals and a tiny cadre of federal lawmakers, the vast majority of Republican officials have zero interest in health care reforms that significantly increase access to care. The new House Republican plan was supposed to show otherwise. If they actually manage to produce something—this isn’t the first time they’ve promised a proposal wasn’t imminent—and if it looks like the media reports suggest, the plan will merely confirm everybody’s suspicions: Significantly increasing access to health care just isn’t a priority for today’s Republican Party.