New state-centric plan for healthcare
Gov. Scott Walker, Photo: Greg Duke, Tulsa Today
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association (RGA), is publicly supporting a renewed push to replace Obamacare with a state-centric system that devolves power away from Washington, D.C., out to the 50 states, he told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Tuesday evening.
Walker’s support for the plan, which was crafted by his fellow former 2016 GOP presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and will be introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), comes at a critical moment for the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. Unlike previous congressionally-offered plans, this one—as Breitbart News has reported in exclusive interviews with Santorum and Graham—block-grants control of healthcare out to the states.
It then allows each state to custom-craft their own healthcare system, and is modeled after Santorum’s successful mid-1990s effort to reform welfare — something that achieved bipartisan support as it was eventually backed by then President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
Perhaps more importantly, Walker says he will rally the Republican governors across the country from his RGA chairman slot–there are 34 of them currently–behind the effort, something that can help push the bill across the finish line in the Congress since a state’s governors can easily get buy-in from its senators and representatives.