My apologies. Between a death in the family and some other personal issues, I'm way behind the eight ball this week. As a result, I'm just now getting around to writing about not one, not two, not three, but FOUR major GOP attacks on the ACA and healthcare in general which either happened or had major developments this week.
Instead of getting even further behind by trying to do a full, detailed take on each of them, I'm going to crib like crazy from other healthcare reporters/articles to cover the gist of each.
A group of Republicans and Washington D.C. think tanks released a proposal Tuesday that aims to resurrect Obamacare repeal. The consistent chatter around the proposal has drawn ire from the White House and GOP leadership, as the midterms are just months away, and repeal efforts haven’t proved to be winning strategies.
Time and opportunity still exist to replace Obamacare.
...I reported in January that a number of conservative groups, under the leadership of former Sen. Rick Santorum, was working hard to craft a new Obamacare replacement...Behind the scenes, those groups...have continued to meet and tweak their plan, and they seem just a few weeks away from being able to unveil it.
...I listened in on a March 21 conference call among numerous interested parties, and received further updates within the past week from Santorum.
President Trump’s budget plan released Monday endorsed an Obamacare repeal and replace bill that gives funding to states and makes cuts to Medicaid.
...Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., are behind the legislation that takes Obamacare’s funding for the Medicaid expansion and tax subsidies for lower premiums and gives it to states through block grants. The senators introduced the bill in September along with Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Dean Heller, R-Nev.
The bill would end the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare but supporters say states can implement it individually if they want. However, the bill makes cuts to Medicaid overall by capping federal funding per beneficiary.
The bill failed to get enough support in Congress in September, as some senators from expansion states worried about Medicaid cuts and protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Republican leaders have decided not to vote on Obamacare repeal legislation this week, effectively ending the party’s latest effort to wipe away the 2010 health care law.
When, and whether, they will try again remains to be seen. But for now, a defining cause of the Republican Party, including President Donald Trump, lies in tatters.
And at least for the moment, insurance coverage for many millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act’s federal subsidies remains intact ― although insurance markets in some states remain unstable, and the Trump administration’s willingness to manage the program remains unclear.
Yesterday was a Graham-Cassidy (or "Grassidy", as former CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt keeps trying to push) Fest, with all sorts of Grassidy-centric happenings, including the one-and-only Senate hearing on the bill; the Congressional Budget Office releasing their preliminary/partial score of G-C (the prior version, not the later version); Senator Susan Collins releasing her statement opposing the bill; and last night's CNN healthcare debate between Senators Graham & Cassidy vs. Senators Sanders and Klobucher. I might write something about these items later today, but right now I want to look at another development.
Last week I broke the story (later picked up by Axios, NY Magazine and Vox.com) that the Graham-Cassidy bill would make thousands of current insurance policies illegal starting on January 1, 2018...just 98 days from now.
Why? Because, as noted at the link, while the current ACA structure (exchanges, tax credits, etc) would stay mostly in place for 2 more years, some provisions would be repealed immediately...including a nationwide ban on any exchange policy offering abortion coverage.
This morning JP Massar (who called my attention to the 1/1/18 effective date the first time) inquired as to whether that had changed with the new version of G-C. As you can see on pages 2 & 3 of the new bill...nope. It’s still in place.
Here's direct links to the bill itself and to the GOP's table showing what they claim would be the net federal funding changes from 2020-2026 for each state relative to current law...but they pulled one hell of a fast one.
it's pretty rare for the entire medical, hospital and insurance industry to agree on just about anything...and yet here we are (emphasis in the original):
The following statement was jointly released on September 23, 2017 by the American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Hospital Association, Federation of American Hospitals, America's Health Insurance Plans and the BlueCross BlueShield Association regarding the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson legislation.
We represent the nation's doctors, hospitals and health plans. Collectively, our organizations include hundreds of thousands of individual physicians, thousands of hospitals, and hundreds of health plans that serve tens of millions of American patients, consumers and employers every day across the United States.
The past few weeks, while trying to push the Godawful "Graham-Cassidy" ACA repeal bill, Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy has used the following as one of his standard talking points:
.@BillCassidy shares the story of a Louisiana man paying more than $40,000 for his special needs son’s health care under Obamacare. pic.twitter.com/AaZ0IQIfF7
It's time to once again dust off the Three-Legged Stool visual aid to help explain just what the Graham-Cassidy bill would do to the individual insurance market. It's important to note that none of this has anything to do with Medicaid (expansion or traditional), the group market, Medicare and so forth; just the individual market.
Once again, here's what the "3-Legged Stool" was supposed to look like under the Affordable Care Act:
Here's what it actually looks like today, with some rather obvious gaps in the red (enrollee responsibility) and green (government responsibility) legs:
