Lanhee J Chen, Columnist

The Republican Obamacare Battle Plan for 2015

Republicans should try to improve Obamacare in 2015 by shifting power back to the states. They can focus on repealing it after Obama leaves office.

August 28, 2014 at 7:13 PM UTC

By Lanhee J Chen

Lanhee Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who also teaches public policy at Stanford University. He was the policy director of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. Chen was a senior official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration. He practiced business litigation with the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and served as the Winnie Neubauer visiting fellow in health policy studies at the Heritage Foundation. Chen earned his doctorate and master's degree in political science from Harvard University, his law degree from Harvard Law School and his bachelor's degree in government from Harvard College.

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If Republicans capture control of both houses of Congress in November, they will have a golden opportunity to lay the groundwork for a market-based health-care overhaul -- a goal that can only be achieved after the next presidential election.

Repeal of Obamacare, and replacement of it with a complete set of conservative reforms, should remain Republicans' long-term aim. The danger is that they will squander the opportunity to make headway on useful changes to Obamacare in 2015, and instead spend the year consumed only with repealing the law, when such an outcome is impossible with Barack Obama as president for two more years.