What’s the outlook for Obamacare next year?
BUSINESS RECORD STAFF Nov 9, 2016 | 9:35 pm [wp-word-count-reading-time after="min read time"][wp-word-count after="words"]All Latest News, Health and Wellness
With control of both houses of Congress and the presidency, Republicans may finally get their chance to undo large, consequential parts of the Affordable Care Act next year, the New York Times reported.
According to an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, approximately 22 million Americans could lose health coverage if certain aspects of the law are repealed.
Because they won’t have a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, Republicans won’t be able to repeal the entire law. However, they could eliminate several consequential provisions through a special budgetary process known as reconciliation.
Last year, the Senate and House passed a reconciliation bill that undid large portions of the health bill, which President Barack Obama vetoed. Under reconciliation, programs to provide Medicaid coverage for people near or below the poverty line could be eliminated, as could subsidies to help Americans buy their own insurance on the marketplaces. It could also eliminate tax penalties for being uninsured, as well as taxes created under the law to help fund those programs.
Because the health law was written with a number of interdependent provisions aimed at keeping insurance affordable, a partial repeal could disrupt insurance arrangements not just for those newly insured under the law, but also for those who purchased their own insurance before the law.
According to Kaiser Health News, Congress will also face decisions next year on several Affordable Care Act provisions that are on hold and could expire, among them a fee levied on health insurers that was suspended for next year and a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices that was suspended for 2016 and 2017. Also, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a federal-state partnership that Hillary Clinton helped set up in negotiations with Congress during her husband’s administration, is up again for renewal in 2017.
In the short term, Donald Trump could use executive power to make some major changes to the health law on his own.Beyond the health law, Trump also could push for some Republican perennials, such as giving states block grants to handle Medicaid, allowing insurers to sell across state lines, and establishing a federal high-risk insurance pool for people who are ill and unable to get private insurance.
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