Like prior versions, the latest version of the bill from Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would cut federal funding for health coverage for the large majority of states over the next decade (see Table 1). And the cuts would grow dramatically in 2027, when the bill’s temporary block grant (which would replace the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and marketplace subsidies) would expire and its Medicaid per capita cap cuts would become increasingly severe. We estimate that in 2027 alone, the bill would cut federal health care funding by $298 billion relative to current law (see Figure 1), with the cuts affecting all states.
In fact, starting in 2027, Cassidy-Graham would likely be even more damaging than a straight repeal-without-replace bill because it would add large cuts to the rest of Medicaid — on top of eliminating the Medicaid expansion — by imposing a per capita cap on the entire program. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has previously estimated that the repeal-without-replace approach would ultimately leave 32 million more people uninsured.[1] Cassidy-Graham would presumably result in even deeper coverage losses than that in the second decade as the cuts due to the Medicaid per capita cap continue to deepen.
- Eliminate the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and ACA’s marketplace subsidies in 2020 and replace them with an inadequate block grant. Under our estimates, the block grant would provide about $239 billion less between 2020 and 2026 than projected federal spending for the Medicaid expansion and marketplace subsidies under current law, with the cut reaching $40 billion (16 percent) in 2026. The block grant would not adjust based on changes in states’ funding needs, and it could be spent on virtually any health care purpose, with no requirement to offer low- and moderate-income people coverage or financial assistance. And, as noted, the block grant would disappear altogether in 2027.
- The enormous cut in 2027 reflects two factors. First, the block grant would disappear in 2027. The bill’s sponsors have claimed that the rules that govern the budget reconciliation process, which allows the bill to pass the Senate with only 50 votes, necessitated that the proposed block grant be temporary. In reality, however, nothing in those rules prevents the bill from permanently funding its block grant. Furthermore, the expiration of the temporary block grant would create a funding cliff that Congress likely couldn’t afford to fill. Even if there were significant political support for extending the inadequate block grant in the future, budget rules would very likely require offsets for the hundreds of billions of dollars in increased federal spending needed for each additional year.[3]