ACA replacement proposal leaked: Some of the finer points for HR
A draft of the Republicans’ Affordable Care Act (ACA) replacement bill that was leaked to the public is likely to look a lot different when it’s finalized. Still, it gives employers a good indication of how Republicans will start to deliver on their promises to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.
It should come as no surprise to employers that the GOP replacement bill, which was obtained by POLITICO, would scrap a cornerstone of the ACA — the individual mandate — as well as income-based subsidies and all of the laws current taxes (at least one replacement tax is included in the legislation).
According to the discussion draft of the replacement bill, it would offer tax credits for purchasing insurance; however, those credits would be based on age instead of income.
For example, a person under the age of 30 would receive a credit of $2,000. A person over the age of 60, on the other hand, would receive double that amount.
Some of the other highlights of the leaked legislation include:
End of ACA essential health benefits
Obamacare’s essential health benefits mandates require health plans to cover 10 categories of healthcare services, which include:
- Ambulatory patient services
- Emergency services
- Hospitalization
- Maternity and newborn care
- Mental health and substance use disorder services
- Prescription medications
- Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices
- Lab services
- Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, and
- Pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
Under the bill, individual states would make the decisions about what types of services plans must cover — beginning in 2020.
A Medicaid expansion overhaul
The Medicaid expansion under Obamacare that has covered millions of people will be phased out by 2020 under the GOP bill. The replacement proposal: States would receive a set dollar amount for each person.
There would also be variations in the funding amounts based on an individual’s health status. In other words, more money would be allocated for disabled individuals, which is a huge departure from the open-ended entitlement of the current Medicaid program.
Pre-existing conditions, older individuals
One of the most popular elements of the ACA would apparently remain untouched under the GOP bill: the Obamacare provision that prohibits health plans from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.
However, the legislation does take aim at older individuals. The GOP would allow insurers to charge older people up to five times more for healthcare than younger individuals. The current ACA limits that difference to three times as much.
The bill does aim to remedy this discrepancy by providing bigger tax credits for older people.
Taxes get axed
There is a slew of taxes built into the ACA — the manufacturer tax, and taxes on medical devices, health plans and even tanning beds — and the Republican bill would repeal those taxes.
But those taxes help cover the cost of the ACA. So to make up for the shortfall that would result in killing those taxes, the GOP is floating the idea of changing the tax treatment of employer-based health insurance. As employers are well aware, employer-sponsored health plan premiums currently aren’t taxed. Under the GOP proposal, this would be changed for some premiums over a certain threshold — although the specifics of such a change remain murky.
Such a move would surely be met by fierce opposition from the business community. In fact, major employer groups are already preparing to fight such a proposition.
Stay tuned.
Info: A previous version of this article was published on our sister website HR Benefits Alert.
