National Journal

The House Freedom Caucus decided Wednesday afternoon not to take an official position on the House budget, freeing up their members to vote however they want on a resolution crucial to repealing Obamacare, according to a source familiar with their deliberations.

The budget is largely a procedural measure, but sets up a framework to repeal the health care law while avoiding a Senate filibuster. Conservatives in the Freedom Caucus have been pressing leadership to detail how they plan to replace the law before agreeing to go ahead with the budget vote.

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The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is poised to start mak­ing state-based ex­changes pay for us­ing Health­Care.gov’s tech­no­logy, and that has some states mulling the pos­sib­il­ity of shar­ing ser­vices with oth­ers to con­trol costs.

The Cen­ters for Medi­care and Medi­caid Ser­vices pro­posed a rule last year re­quir­ing that cer­tain states es­sen­tially “lease”Health­Care.gov through a user-fee rate of 3 per­cent of the monthly premi­um the is­suer charges for each policy plan—mean­ing that, for the first time, us­ing the fed­er­al plat­form for state-based mar­ket­places won’t be free.

Last month, mar­ket­place of­fi­cials from sev­er­al states gathered in Port­land, Ore­gon to dis­cuss the rule, in­creased col­lab­or­a­tion, and long-term mar­ket­place af­ford­ab­il­ity and sus­tain­ab­il­ity.

Those without health in­sur­ance have a lot to con­sider. On one hand, the fine for re­main­ing un­in­sured steeply in­creases for next year. On the oth­er, the cost of the in­di­vidu­al man­date pen­alty is cheap­er than buy­ing the least ex­pens­ive in­sur­ance plan for 7.1 mil­lion of the nearly 11 mil­lion un­in­sured eli­gible to en­roll in health ex­changes, ac­cord­ing to a Kais­er Fam­ily Found­a­tion ana­lys­is re­leased Wed­nes­day.