Leaked GOP Draft Replacement Plan Would Repeal Most Important ACA Provisions.
In its lead story, NBC Nightly News (2/24, lead story, 2:45, Holt) reported that a leaked draft Republican healthcare proposal “obtained by NBC News calls for gutting the individual mandate, meaning no penalty for those who don’t buy insurance,” yet “if healthy people opt out, it could drive up prices for the elderly and sick.” The proposal also calls for eliminating subsidies and giving “tax credits that will be based on age instead of income,” ending Medicaid expansion by “giving states the control to cover lower income patients with grants,” and providing states with “money to create high-risk pools” so that people with pre-existing conditions can still obtain coverage.
The Washington Post (2/24, Goldstein, Eilperin) reported the House GOP’s plan “would temporarily keep federal money flowing to cover almost the entire cost of people already insured through [Medicaid’s] expansion under the Affordable Care Act, but would block the law’s generous funding for any new participants.” Meanwhile, the Post said the “approach would open a fresh spigot of aid for the 19 Republican-led states that eschewed the ACA’s Medicaid money because of their leaders’ antipathy to the law. This extra aid would probably go to hospitals with a large share of poor and uninsured patients.”
Politico (2/24, Demko) , which broke the story, reported that the draft proposal “would take down the foundation of” the ACA, “including the unpopular individual mandate, subsidies based on people’s income, and all of the law’s taxes.” In addition, it would significantly reduce “Medicaid spending and give states money to create high risk pools for some people with pre-existing conditions.”
Similarly, The Hill (2/24, Sullivan) reported that the draft measure “would dismantle the core aspects of the healthcare law and replace them with a system centered on a new tax credit” of $2,000 to $4,000, depending on people’s age. It would include “$10 billion per year in ‘state innovation grants,’ which are a version of high-risk pools but appear to allow for a broader array of uses for the money by states.” |
