House Republicans on Monday unveiled their long-awaited legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
The two measures dismantle the core aspects of ObamaCare, including its subsidies to help people buy coverage, its expansion of Medicaid, its taxes and its mandates for people to have insurance. (READ THE BILLS HERE AND HERE.)
In its place, Republicans would put in place a new system centered on a tax credit to help people buy insurance.
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The new administration should issue two new rules for the 2018 enrollment season:
- It should let online brokers complete enrollments for people who qualify for subsidies. No need to redirect these applicants to HealthCare.gov.
- It should stop imposing user fees to prop up its unnecessary website and finance ad campaigns.
These two changes would set loose an army of insurance carriers, traditional brokers and private online exchanges, all competing to enroll people in subsidized coverage.
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House Republicans have been working with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on parts of an ObamaCare replacement that they could include in a repeal bill this spring, lobbyists and aides told The Hill. They have been working with the CBO, Congress’s nonpartisan budget scorekeeper, on the details of tax credits, high-risk pool funding, and changes to Medicaid that could be included in a repeal bill that Republicans hope to pass by the end of March.
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Two of the top Republicans in Congress on Monday said they are pushing ahead with the plan to begin repealing ObamaCare this spring, despite any confusion caused by President Trump saying the process could spill into next year.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) told reporters that he is working off of Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) timeline of moving repeal legislation by the end of March.
“That’s the timetable I’m working off of,” Brady said.
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Congressional Republicans are facing their first big decision on taxes under President Trump: Which ones to scrap in the repeal of ObamaCare.
Republicans have in the past sought to erase most of the big tax hikes in the healthcare law, and the chairmen of the tax-writing committees have expressed support for eliminating the taxes in a repeal bill.
“After spending seven years talking about the harm being caused by these taxes, it’s difficult to switch gears now and decide that they’re fine so long as they’re being used to pay for our healthcare bill,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Wednesday.
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In the tradition of departing presidents, Barack Obama left a letter for incoming President Donald Trump.
The thrust of the message, which Trump relayed to congressional leaders during their White House meeting Monday evening, was a plea to salvage ObamaCare — or swap it for something at least as generous.
“I haven’t seen the letter,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who attended the meeting, told reporters Tuesday. “But President Obama correctly … stated that, ‘Look, we believe the Affordable Care Act is a very important piece of legislation which has given Americans better health, better access, more reliability. And if you have a bill … that improves upon all this, well, you know, maybe I could support it.”
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Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday mapped out the GOP’s 200-day legislative strategy, saying Republicans will repeal and replace portions of ObamaCare by spring and tackle tax reform before the August recess.
During a private meeting of House and Senate Republicans at their annual policy retreat, Ryan said House committees will mark up a reconciliation package in the next couple of weeks that will both repeal President Obama’s healthcare law and replace portions of it, according to several lawmakers in the room.
Then, Ryan will bring the final reconciliation package to the House floor by late February or early March.
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President Trump told Fox News last week that when it comes to ObamaCare, “we’re going to have a plan that’s going to be great for people.”
What that plan will actually be, though, remains unclear.
Trump has said that he will put forward an ObamaCare replacement plan shortly after Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) is confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, an announcement that caught lawmakers off guard.
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A poll conducted by the GS Strategy Group on behalf of the conservative American Action Network, found that 54 percent of likely voters say they would like to see the president’s signature legislative achievement undergo full repeal or major changes.
Last Wednesday, Vice President-elect Mike Pence told House Republicans that President-elect Donald Trump is ready to sign executive orders when he takes office that would enable an orderly transition away from ObamaCare, even as Congress begins to debate alternatives and replacements.
Both Affordable Care Act (ACA) opponents and supporters tended to exaggerate how much immediate harm Trump would do to the outgoing Obama administration’s legacy healthcare program.
The new president certainly “could” swing a wrecking ball against what remains of the troubled effort to expand insurance coverage under tighter federal government control and substantial taxpayer subsidies. His toolkit of potential executive branch actions is large and varied, but it is not unlimited. The more important questions involve how Trump wants to utilize those powers, and for what objectives.
With patience and care, Trump could initiate new formal rulemaking to partially revise or reverse older, existing regulations, and to create new ones.
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