Governors, gubernatorial candidates and state legislators, meanwhile, will be asked whether they intend to “opt out” of provisions in the Affordable Care Act that are overwhelmingly popular with voters, as is permitted under the Republican plan. Their plans for state Medicaid programs also will be scrutinized if massive GOP cuts to Medicaid funding are realized.
.. I can’t recall a vote this significant in terms of its political potential in 20 years.”
.. Trump’s political advisers calculated that it was less damaging electorally for congressional Republicans to pass a bill that some of their constituents see as deeply flawed than to have passed nothing at all.
.. Polling shows that the public disagrees with Republican health-care plans. Thirty-seven percent of Americans support repealing and replacing the law known as Obamacare, while 61 percent want to keep it and try to improve it
.. slash Medicaid spending by more than $800 billion and cut nearly $600 billion in taxes under the health-care law, most of which will benefit the wealthiest Americans.
.. the Republican bill would lift that prohibition and give states the option to let insurers charge more for them.
.. Wilson added, “Republicans in the House right now should be on their knees praying for the Senate to kill this,” arguing that the line of attack would be less powerful if the bill does not become law.
.. whether it’s the AARP saying it charges people over 50 five times more, or the American Cancer Society saying it guts protections for preexisting conditions. There’s no real way to defend that to voters.”
GOP Health Bill Jeopardizes Out-of-Pocket Caps in Employer Plans
Last-minute amendment would allow states to obtain waivers from certain Affordable Care Act requirements
The provision, part of a last-minute amendment, lets states obtain waivers from certain Affordable Care Act insurance regulations. Insurers in states that obtain the waivers could be freed from a regulation mandating that they cover 10 particular types of health services, among them maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health treatment and hospitalization... Under the House bill, large employers could choose the benefit requirements from any state—including those that are allowed to lower their benchmarks under a waiver, health analysts said. By choosing a waiver state, employers looking to lower their costs could impose lifetime limits and eliminate the out-of-pocket cost cap from their plans under the GOP legislation.A company wouldn’t have to do business in a state to choose that state’s benefits level, analysts said. The company could just choose a state to match no matter where it is based.
Republicans plan health-care vote on Thursday, capping weeks of fits and starts
Under the GOP plan, states could opt out of parts of the ACA, meaning people with preexisting conditions could be denied coverage or charged more. Such states would have to set up “high-risk pools” to absorb some of the costs
.. Some experts doubted that $8 billion was enough to aggressively address those costs over a five-year period.
.. “For subsidies to cover 68 percent of enrollees’ premium costs, as ACA tax credits do now in the individual market exchanges, the government would have to put up $32.7 billion annually,” Emily Gee, a health economist at the progressive Center for American Progress, wrote in an analysis of the plan. “Even after applying that subsidy, high-cost consumers would still owe $10,000 annually toward premiums.”
WHY TRUMPCARE KEEPS FAILING
compromise bill, worked out over several weeks of negotiations between two Republicans: Mark Meadows, a North Carolinian and the head of the right-wing Freedom Caucus; and Tom MacArthur, a New Jerseyan who is co-chair of the Tuesday Group
.. The compromise negotiations laid bare the simple dynamics of health care among Republicans: every action to add votes on the right loses votes in the center.
.. Dent also opposes how the compromise bill would allow states to deregulate insurance markets to allow insurers to deny coverage to people with preëxisting medical conditions. The preëxisting-conditions provision was a core part of Obamacare, and it was one of the few provisions of the law that Trump and Republican leaders promised to retain.
.. And, if the bill were to change in the Senate, there’s a possibility that the Freedom Caucus will abandon the effort all over again.
.. in the Senate, where, among both Republicans and Democrats, the Freedom Caucus is held in low regard.
.. If Obamacare repeal officially dies, Dent said that Trump has one other option: “Start over, deal with health care from the center out, and work with some Democrats.”