Welp. In a development which should surprise absolutely no one, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson has announced that the bipartisan "Fitzpatrick Bill" which would include a 2-year extension of the enhanced ACA tax credits (albeit with significant caveats) won't be included in their healthcare bill vote this week after all.
Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed Tuesday he will not allow a House vote this week to extend expiring Obamacare subsidies — a reversal from last week when a GOP leadership aide said the process “would allow” for an amendment vote.
“In the end, there was not an agreement,” Johnson told reporters, noting the divides in his conference over the subsidies.
The biggest program on the hit list, however, is Medicaid, which would make up nearly half of the $5 TRILLION in budget cuts Republicans have in mind in order to pay for...massive tax cuts for corporations & the wealthy, of course.
Under the RSC Health Care Task Force plan, protections pertaining to guaranteed issue and the prohibition on coverage exclusions would be retailored to reward continuous coverage and promote portability in the individual marketplace.
"RETAILORED." DANGER WILL ROBINSON.
Scratch Guaranteed Issue.
Additionally, to provide Americans with options that fit their individualized needs, each state would again be allowed to determine the minimum attributes and cost-sharing parameters of plans to best meet the needs of their own citizens. In no case, however, would carriers be able to rescind, increase rates, or refuse to renew one’s health insurance simply because a person developed a condition after enrollment.
Since Donald Trump was defeated in the 2020 Presidential election, most people seemed to be under the impression that the Republican Party's decade-long obsession with tearing down President Obama's signature legislative accomplishment, the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, was finally over.
Healthcare journalist extraordinaire Jonathan Cohn even pulled the trigger on publishing his definitive history of the ACA, The Ten Year War...although honestly, there was still one remaining major legal loose end to tie up which wouldn't happen until about eight months later.
As I noted at the time, Vought's proposed budget would include, among many other horrific things, completely eliminating funding for the ACA's Medicaid expansion program as well as complete elimination of all Advance Premium Tax Credit (APTC) funding for ACA exchange-based individual market enrollees.
I went on to note that if this proposal were to somehow pass the Senate and be signed into law by President Biden (neither of which is likely to happen, to put it mildly), nearly 40 million Americans would lose healthcare coverage as a result nationally.
Below, I've broken that number out by state to give better context about just how draconian such an eventuality would be.
