Repealing Obamacare

The House passed a repeal and replacement to Obamacare last week.  The first obvious question is why does it need to be replaced?  The government of a free country should not be involved in providing healthcare to its citizens, but it is not realistic to move directly from where we are now, to an ideal free system.  It is hard to know where to look for facts about what was actually in the bill that was passed, and there is a ton of clearly false or misleading information out there.  The only source I have seen that makes any sense is this article from NPR, who I think most would agree does not have a conservative slant:
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/04/526887531/
I agree with most everything in here, and it seems very wise.  The only role the government should play in health insurance, is setting some basic framework standards, and enforcing contracts to settle disputes.  Under Obamacare, heath insurance was usually treated like term life insurance, with the terms reset every year.  This caused people with ongoing medical issues to be have their policies canceled when they "ended," which led to this whole issue of pre-existing conditions."  Ideally, health insurance should work similar to whole life insurance, in that as long as you pay your premiums, the insurance company shouldn't be able to cancel or abridge your plan.  The primary difference is that while life insurance is insulated from inflation (it effects premiums and payouts equally) health insurance is not, so it is reasonable for premiums to increase over time.  According to NPR, this new bill prohibits companies from canceling insurance policies or increasing premiums for customers with higher medical costs, as long as their premiums don't lapse.  This is how it should work.

It also gets rid of the tax penalties for not having health insurance, which were ridiculous.  Those without health insurance should be risking high medical costs, not guaranteed high tax penalties.  Foregoing health insurance wouldn't be hurting anyone else if we weren't guaranteeing treatment to everyone, which is the main problem.  People aren't responsible for their own care, so Democrats had to come of with some way to force them to play along and pay into the system that was forced upon them.  This is the antithesis of freedom.

Income based tax credits are replaced with age based tax credits.  This would be advantageous to people like me who can't accurately predict their annual income, if I was taking those credits.  But I refuse them on moral grounds, that other taxpayers shouldn't be paying for my healthcare, or any other private costs for that matter.

Cutting all of the Obamacare taxes is a good step.  They are only restoring things to 2010 levels, and this whole issue just exposes one more lie in the Obamacare process.  If restoring pre-Obamacare tax levels cuts $1Trillion in federal revenue, then Obamacare was a $1Trillion tax, which is one of many reasons people were opposed to it. (And because they didn't want to keep their doctor, right?)

Cutting Medicaid increases is fine, since it shouldn't exist in the first place.  If we start of with the assumption that political freedom is a good thing at a moral level, we can easily conclude that government provided healthcare is a moral evil.  Who ever pays for something controls it, and if someone controls your healthcare, they pretty much control your life, hence ending freedom.  The only form of government healthcare I could see being justified in the US would be universal care for children up to 18, since they aren't free citizens anyway.  But the problem with that is it would be establishing a habit and pattern of government entitlement from an early age, and cause more issues in society than it solves.

They also gave states the ability to apply for waivers to Obamacare's regulations, effectively returning power to the states for their own healthcare.  This is an eloquent solution to a complex problem of existing entitlements.  It means that Congress won't be responsible for ending benefits in states that take them up on the offer for a waiver, but that the opportunity if there to maintain the new status quo for states that want it.  It allows the issue to be settled at a more local level, where individual citizens and groups have more of a voice in the process.  I am much less opposed to state funded healthcare, because people are free to choose what state to live in.  I choose to live in CA regardless of its unconstitutional gun laws and other ridiculous liberal policies, but if they bothered me enough, I am free to move to Wyoming if I choose.  I am not free to move out of the US on a whim, unless I find somewhere that agrees to take me. (It is not a right)  So state run healthcare is still a bad idea, but a much smaller bad idea than federal run healthcare.  Of course the same is true for state run education, etc.