Republicans seek to turn health reform over to the states

AFTER Republicans failed to agree on a replacement for the Affordable Care Act earlier this year, the cause of Obamacare repeal looked dead. Yet a revival was always possible before September 30th, when a budget measure allowing a health bill to pass the Senate with only 51 votes, rather than 60, expires. The ticking clock has spurred four Republican senators, led by Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to have one last stab at getting a bill passed.

Messrs Cassidy and Graham are not brimming with new policy ideas. Instead of reforming Obamacare themselves, they want to pass the baton to state governments. Like past Republican bills, their proposal would limit the federal government’s role in Medicaid (health insurance for the poor) to providing a fixed grant to the states for each person enrolled. The new bill extends that approach to the individual market, in which 17m people who do not get health insurance from some other source buy it for themselves. From 2020, the federal funds that currently subsidise poorer buyers would instead be divvied up among states in proportion to the distribution of Americans earning between 50% and 138% of the federal poverty line. States could spend this cash on health care mostly as they saw fit. They could also opt out of many of Obamacare’s regulations, such as those preventing insurers from charging...Continue reading

Source: United States http://ift.tt/2xkkutv

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