Within hours of reconvening Tuesday, the GOP-led Congress will finally act to fulfill a 2010 promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare. The effort is set to begin Tuesday afternoon when the House Rules Committee meets on the repeal measure, with a full debate and vote as early as Tuesday. With the Republican-led Senate having already passed its version, GOP congressional leaders will send the measure to President Obama, daring him to veto it.
Obama administration officials said last month that about 2.5 million new customers had bought insurance through HealthCare.gov since open enrollment began on Nov. 1. The number of new enrollees is 29% higher than last year at this time, suggesting that the threat of a larger penalty may be motivating more people to get covered.
But plenty of healthy holdouts remain, and their resistance helps explain why insurers are worried about the financial viability of the exchanges over time. People who earn too much to qualify for federal subsidies that defray the cost of coverage may be most likely to opt out.
Many insurance companies are losing money selling ObamaCare policies. Unfortunately, the White House wants to make their losses your problem. In December, Congress refused an administration request to provide insurers with $2.5 billion in bailout money to help cover their 2014 losses.
The Obama administration hasn’t given up. It has declared that this $2.5 billion in corporate welfare and potentially billions more for losses insurers have incurred in 2015 is “an obligation of the U.S. government for which full payment is required.”
Permit states to form health care choice compacts and allow insurers to sell policies in any state participating in the compact. (Compacts may not take effect before January 1, 2016)
On Wednesday, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin announced that he was planning to keep ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, but would seek federal waivers to “transform” the program. But Bevin’s plan is already hitting an a snag: he wants to use a Section 1332 waiver to “transform Medicaid.” The snag: Section 1332 doesn’t provide any authority for Medicaid reform.
A group of health policy analysts have collaborated on a set of proposals for replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and also reforming other major portions of health care delivery, such as the tax treatment of employer-sponsored health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, and Health Savings Accounts. Because so much attention has been paid to the repeal of the ACA by those who have opposed it, we believe it is important to focus on a serious proposal that could both replace this law and provide additional measures of reform, especially to the health care entitlement programs.
We believe our reform agenda represents such a proposal. Furthermore, none of us regards the pre-ACA health care system as an acceptable alternative.
If it’s December, it must be time for a massive, one-time, all-or-nothing annual spending bill. That’s just what has become of Congress’s core function over the past decade. This year’s version includes a 2,009 page omnibus appropriations bill and a 233 page tax bill mostly extending various “temporary” tax preferences and other provisions.
Republicans have majorities in both houses, so this bill reflects their priorities on the whole. But on health care, it’s actually most interesting for what it suggests about the Democrats—some meaningful number of whose votes are after all necessary for passage.
A group of state insurance commissioners is developing a proposal to limit the amount that health insurers might have to pay out under the Affordable Care Act’s risk adjustment program, New Mexico Insurance Superintendent John Franchini told SNL.
The plan would install a so-called circuit breaker to prevent companies from paying more than 2% of their premium revenue into the program each year. That boundary would make insurers’ financial obligations more predictable and avoid the kinds of surprise payouts that contributed to the destabilization of several health plans in 2015.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly today 65-33 in favor a $1.8 trillion package of spending bills and tax breaks, sending the legislation to President Obama’s desk for his signature. Included in the two bills are provisions trimming some of the levies that help finance ObamaCare. A tax on medical devices would be suspended for two years, a levy on health insurers would stop for a year and a tax on higher-cost insurance policies would be postponed two years until 2020.
In a big package of tax and spending legislation that Congress is likely to approve this week, Republicans have forced President Obama to swallow three changes that undermine his signature health care law, including a two-year delay of a tax on high-cost insurance plans provided by employers to workers.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Obama’s first budget director, Peter R. Orszag, a leading supporter of the Cadillac tax, said, “The two-year delay is likely to be equivalent to repeal of the tax because people will expect it to be deferred again and again.”