House Republicans are subpoenaing documents related to ObamaCare payments that they say break the law.
Two House committees issued the subpoenas on Wednesday, saying the administration has refused to comply with document requests for over a year. The administration counters that the matter is part of an ongoing lawsuit.
“Now, 15 months after our first request, we still don’t have the most basic information about the $5 billion in unlawful payments to insurance companies,” Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the chairmen of two committees, said in a statement.
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House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said Friday that House Republicans would unveil their ObamaCare replacement plan sometime in the next 45 days.
“The task force is working on it,” Brady said at a Bloomberg Government event. “We’ll be laying that out here over the next month and a half.”
Republicans have said that they plan to have Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) policy task forces lay out their plans before the Republican National Convention in July.
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Health insurance companies are laying the groundwork for substantial increases in ObamaCare premiums, opening up a line of attack for Republicans in a presidential election year.
Many insurers have been losing money on the ObamaCare marketplaces, in part because they set their premiums too low when the plans started in 2014. The companies are now expected to seek substantial price increases.
“There are absolutely some carriers that are going to have to come in with some pretty significant price hikes to make up for the underpricing that they did before,” said Sabrina Corlette, a professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, while noting that the final picture remains unclear.
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The conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) on Friday submitted its recommendations for a Republican replacement for ObamaCare as it seeks to shape a plan being formed by a group of House chairmen. The recommendations come from the RSC’s already-existing legislation, the American Health Care Reform Act, which would completely repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a new system.
“This bill relies on conservative principles and increased state flexibility to transform our top-down health care system into one that creates competition, growth and increased access for all Americans,” the group said in a statement.
The proposal would replace ObamaCare’s refundable tax credits with a tax deduction, which tends to provide less help to low-income people by reducing the taxes people owe rather than allowing for the possibility of getting money back in a refund.
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The GOP committee chairmen issued subpoenas for Health and Human Services (HHS) documents related the “Basic Health Program,” which they say the administration is unconstitutionally funding despite a lack of appropriation from Congress.
Republicans say the Obama administration is paying out these funds for the program even though Congress has not appropriated the money. The administration argues that it already has a permanent appropriation under the Affordable Care Act, but Republicans say that permanent appropriation was only for the law’s tax credits, not for the Basic Health Program.
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The Supreme Court asked for additional information from both sides on “whether and how” employees of religious nonprofits could get contraceptive coverage through other means that would be less objectionable to their employers.
The goal, is to address how employees could still get contraceptive coverage “but in a way that does not require any involvement” from the religious employers, meaning they would not have to sign the form that they currently object to.
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Health insurance subsidies are expected to cost the federal government about $660 billion in 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Much of the $136 billion in extra health spending stems from “significantly higher” enrollment in Medicaid, the federal health program for low-income people, according to the CBO’s latest annual report on healthcare spending. The estimates do not include spending on people over the age of 65.
The CBO figures also show an 11 percent increase in the cost of ObamaCare subsidies.
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A government report revealed that CMS has failed to protect healthcare.gov. The site that millions use to purchase health insurance under the ACA logged 316 cybersecurity incidents during an 18-month period.
The CMS has also failed to adequately monitor security controls at state-based insurance marketplaces, according to the watchdog. In a previous report, the GAO found three states with “significant weaknesses,” including insufficient encryption and inadequately configured firewalls.
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The challengers, Zubik v. Burwell, argue the Obama administration is unjustifiably forcing religious groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor to cover birth control, despite an arrangement in which insurers provide contraception directly.
The administration counters that the challengers are threatening contraceptive access for women and say the court risks setting a dangerous precedent if it finds in their
favor.
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The White House is looking to avoid a partisan flare-up as it rings in the sixth anniversary of ObamaCare.
In a series of events this week, the Obama administration will look beyond the law’s central issues of access and affordability and explore the “next chapter” of healthcare reform.
The White House’s weeklong focus on system-wide reforms — rather than the record low uninsured rate or popular provisions like banning insurance providers from denying coverage based on a pre-existing condition — reflects growing confidence in the administration that the law will stay on the books after Obama leaves office.
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