This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 20, 2015. I'm Caleb Brown.

Jeff Bush has a plan for replacing Obamacare, but many of its elements hinge upon the same tax

credit plans of other Republican candidates.

Therefore, says Cato's Michael Cannon, it too qualifies as Obamacare Light.

Well, like every Republican candidate,

Jeb Bush has said that he's going to repeal Obamacare

and he's going to replace it with free market reforms. The problem is that like

Marco Rubio, like Scott Walker who has now dropped out of the race, Jeb Bush's

replace plan emulates an awful lot of Obamacare so much that I think we can call it

Obamacare light. The centerpiece of the Rubio plan and the Bush plan is a health insurance tax credit.

We're going to repeal Obamacare and then we're going to provide these refundable health

insurance tax credits.

Jeb Bush says if you don't get insurance through an employer. health insurance

through an employer

you're gonna get a refundable tax credit that helps you purchase insurance.

This bears a lot of similarities to Obamacare.

Obamacare has refundable tax credits for people who don't get health insurance through an employer.

Obamacare has an individual mandate that basically says if you buy a health insurance plan that was

designed by the government, then you pay less money to the government.

If you don't buy that plan, you have to pay a penalty, you pay more.

That's exactly how Jeb Bush's health insurance tax credit works.

The amount of the credit is effectively a penalty.

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