Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has unveiled what his team calls a “conservative” health care plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.
The plan would give more power to the states to regulate health insurance and would guarantee coverage for individuals to buy coverage for “high cost medical” needs.
It would also guarantee coverage for people with pre-existing health conditions, one of the most popular features of Obamacare, and would eliminate the expansion of Medicaid.
Bush outlined his plan during a speech Tuesday at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. He attacked Obamacare as a major drag on the nation’s economy.
“When you consider the wreckage, it makes you wonder how anybody could support this now,” he noted.
But he added that the leading Democratic candidates are on board with Obamacare.
“And the debate tonight in Las Vegas will probably prove that they will be strongly supportive of this top-down driven, highly bureaucratic insurance plan that is stifling our ability to rise up,” Bush said.
The Jeb Bush campaign says his plan would accomplish three goals: promoting innovation, lowering costs of health care and returning power to the states.
Several conservative analysts have praised the plan, calling it “substantive, and a clear improvement over Obamacare.”
But Bush’s Republican rival in the presidential field, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal tweeted Tuesday, “There’s an empty podium (referring to Vice-President Joe Biden) in at the Democrat debate. @jebbush should take it and argue for his ‘Obamacare Lite” health care proposal.”
The former Florida governor needs to burnish his credentials with conservatives. A CBS-New York Times poll shows him in fifth place and in single digits among Republicans, trailing far behind front-runners Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson.
