Health Care Replacement–Take Two
April 29th marks an important day in Washington D.C. for several reasons. First, it’s President Trump’s 100th day in office. Second, the current federal operating budget runs out–which could cause the federal government to shut down partially if Congress can’t get a new budget approved. And if that weren’t enough, President Trump and Congressional Republicans are working hard to squeeze through yet another revised version of their health care plan to replace the ACA (the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”).
If this sounds like a lot . . . well, it is.
Many Congressional insiders have already voiced doubts that it will be possible to pass a budget bill and a revised health care bill all by the 29th. So why the rush? The failure of Trump’s first health care replacement bill, which didn’t even make it to a vote in the House of Representatives, was a very public setback for the Trump administration, which campaigned on the promise of getting things done in Washington. Republicans are hoping to pass the health care replacement legislation quickly to help repair the legacy of Trump’s first 100 days in office.
Related Links
- Read about the Republican Party’s first attempt to replace Obamacare by clicking on this link.
- Follow up with why the Republican’s American Health Care Act was pulled from the House floor before a full vote.
What’s Different This Time?
The original health care replacement bill failed largely because it didn’t have the support of the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative Republicans in Congress. This time around, the goal is to win over both moderate and more extreme Republicans. Some of the more popular benefits of the current ACA will remain, like guaranteed coverage for maternity and emergency care. Insurance companies would also still be required to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.
One big difference, however, is that states can opt out of these requirements if they can prove that insurance premiums will be lowered, that the number of insured people would increase, or that doing so would be in the best “public interest of the state.” States would also not have to ensure coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions if they instead create a high-risk insurance pool.
In other words, states would take the sickest and most expensive individuals out of the system and pay for them using a separate pool. On the one hand, this could be a popular idea because it means that insurance premiums for everyone else in the system would go down. But on the other hand, these high-risk pools have been poorly funded in the past, and there is no agreement yet on how to make sure that enough money will go into them to give the sickest individuals the coverage they need.
Will It Pass?
Right now, there is a lack of strong support for this new replacement bill. Though many Republicans in Congress are pushing hard to promote it, others have stated that they do not believe that something so important should be rushed just to meet an arbitrary deadline. Others question the concept of the high-risk pool, which has failed in the past. Congressional Democrats are already focused on having their budget demands met in order to avoid a governmental shutdown, and will likely be unwilling to devote a lot of time or effort between now and then to coming up with a compromise on health care. Even if the bill does manage to pass in the House of Representatives, it is unlikely that it will be so lucky in the Senate, particularly with such a short time frame available for negotiations.
What Do You Think? Though many Republicans (and some Democrats as well) are unhappy with the Affordable Care Act, so far no one has been able to come up with a workable replacement plan. Imagine that you are a member of Congress tasked with coming up with a new health care replacement bill, and take a moment to answer the following questions in a short paragraph: What should the federal government’s role be in protecting the health care rights of its citizens? What key components of a health care plan (such as maternity care, emergency care, guaranteed coverage for preexisting conditions, etc.) are most important to you? How should the government fund the plan?
