Trumpcare Defeat Could Be a Small But Important Victory for Healthcare Freedom...

By Robert Wenzel

Under the incompetent management of House Speaker Paul Ryan the statist Trumpcare bill has been defeated without even a House vote.

This is a good thing. The bill was horrific and worse than Obamacare. It would have actually expanded parts of Obamacare and would have made the mandate much more ironclad and difficult to escape.

If President Trump continues on a path I reported on back in February, the Trump-Ryan defeat could actually be a small plus for advocates of healthcare freedom.

I reported in February on an important Dick Morris observation:

[Morris] reports that President Trump has ordered that the IRS not enforce the individual mandate and that Trump has changed the rules for health insurance coverage so that insurance companies can offer insurance plans that are much more flexible than what was the case under Obamacare.

In other words, a lot of the coercion of Obamacare has been eliminated by Trump already through the backdoor...

Congress can dillydally all it wants with "repeal and replace,' in fact, the more delay the better if Morris is correct in his analysis.

Got that? Long before Trumpcare took shape as a bill, Trump had already ordered that the Obamacare mandate not be enforced by the IRS. Further, he has apparently created an environment where insurance companies are given much greater flexibility to tailor insurance plans in line with consumer desires.

We are far from a free market in healthcare but if Trump continues to allow insurance plan flexibility and continues to provide guidance to the IRS not to enforce the Obama mandate, then we are in a much better position, free market-wise, than if Trumpcare had passed.

The article was originally published at EconomicPolicyJournal.com