Congress has no choice but to revisit the issue of health reform, and leaders have the greatest opportunity by tackling Medicaid. In 2016 the federal government spent $42 billion on ObamaCare’s exchanges. It spent $358 billion on Medicaid. States and localities pitched in another $208 billion, for a total national Medicaid expenditure of $566 billion in 2016. The growth in spending on health-care entitlements like Medicaid and Medicare threatens to overwhelm the Treasury, starving the federal government of the funds it needs to pay for everything else, including education, welfare and national defense.
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U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said on Thursday getting rid of the so-called “Cadillac” tax on high-cost employer-provided health insurance could be part of the spending deal now under negotiation in Congress.
“We want to get rid of it,” Brady, a Republican, told reporters outside his office, adding that this could “possibly” be part of an agreement lawmakers are seeking to avoid a government shutdown on Jan. 19.
“Even Democrats who put that awful tax in place, believe it needs to be delayed. If we can find some common ground there that would be terrific,” Brady said.
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In a letter to President Trump, Leader McConnell, and Speaker Ryan, a dozen health policy leaders recommend that health reform continue to be a top priority in 2018. Insurance premiums continue to soar, and millions of people have little or no choice of health insurers. The group says individuals need to be empowered with greater flexibility and choice and that states are better equipped than Washington to oversee their health insurance markets. This requires legislative action from Congress to redirected resources and provide them with greater regulatory flexibility.
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Republicans are under renewed pressure to shore up the fragile US healthcare system after they knocked out a pillar of Obamacare in landmark tax legislation, but did not attempt to stabilise it. Party leaders differ over whether to make healthcare a signature issue, stung by their failure to repeal Barack Obama’s reforms entirely in the summer. But the tax bill has made it harder for Congress to do nothing in the coming election year, say experts.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Friday encouraged two key senators to continue working on legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
McConnell encouraged Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to keep working to cobble together enough votes to pass their ObamaCare repeal legislation.
“I wish them well,” McConnell said and added that if the senators can get the votes next year, he’d encourage the Senate to vote on the bill.
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The GOP’s new tax bill, which passed Congress on Wednesday afternoon after one last vote in the House of Representatives and will be signed by President Donald Trump, is also a health care bill. The tax bill does at least as much (if not more) to upend Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, than even all of the Trump administration’s thousand cuts to the health law over the past year by repealing the individual mandate. Which raises the question: Just what is the Obamacare individual mandate? And what does its repeal mean for Americans?
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Senate Republicans are looking for ways to ensure that two ObamaCare funding bills they’re trying to pass don’t put money toward insurance plans that cover abortions.
“There were some questions that were raised in the pro-life community, and we want to make sure we get those addressed so that all conservatives feel comfortable voting for this transition out of ObamaCare, which is what this is all about,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD).
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Senate Republicans are punting two ObamaCare bills into next year as lawmakers scramble to avoid a government shutdown. GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) said they have asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to not bring the bills up this week.
“Rather than considering a broad year-end funding agreement as we expected, it has become clear that Congress will only be able to pass another short-term extension to prevent a government shutdown and to continue a few essential programs. For this reason, we have asked Senator McConnell not to offer this week our legislation,” they said in a joint statement.
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The individual mandate repeal actually doesn’t take effect until 2019, Laszewski noted, “but I doubt many consumers knew that when they decided not to sign up during all of the news reports about the individual mandate being repealed.”
Thomas Miller, JD, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank here, sees the repeal as “more of a ‘mercy killing’ (putting it out of its chronically ineffective and unpopular misery),” he said in an email. As to whether more people will become uninsured if the mandate is repealed, “Self-serving claims by insurance sector interests and diehard ACA defenders that mandate repeal will trigger widespread disruption and despair in health care markets are vastly exaggerated, as long as other coverage subsidy dollars from taxpayers keep flowing. Good riddance to a half-hearted effort at trying to coerce some mostly less-affluent Americans into buying coverage they did not want, could not afford, or both.”
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Last November, the American people sent a message to Washington: Get things done. With Republican control of both chambers of Congress and the Oval Office, the time to enact pro-growth, pro-innovation policies that benefit American workers and businesses is now.
This month, Congress and the Trump administration have the opportunity to significantly boost one of America’s most vibrant and growing industries by suspending the federal excise tax on medical devices. This misguided tax is set to go back into effect on Jan. 1, which is why Reps. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., and Erik Paulsen, R-Minn., recently introduced legislation that would suspend the medical device tax for five years.
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