House Republicans Release Plan to Repeal and Replace ACA

March 1, 2017 LeadingAge DC Executive Director

A plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been released by House Republicans in Congress. As anticipated, the bill modifies Medicaid by providing states with increased flexibility through per capita caps or block grants. The per capita cap would be determined by each state’s average Medicaid spending in a base year that would grow with inflation and take into consideration the number of eligible enrollees.

These changes would basically undo ACA’s expansion of Medicaid and instead give each state a fixed amount of money for each beneficiary. Under an initial analysis conducted by health care consulting company Avalere Health, DC’s Medicaid federal funding could be reduced by 16-30 percent under a block grant payment system and under a per capita cap payment system.

LeadingAge has raised concerns regarding this plan, conducted a Call-In Campaign to tell Congress to oppose this provision, and will make the issue one of the centerpieces of hill visits in D.C. at PEAK later this month.

The Republican plan to repeal and replace the ACA also provides tax credits indexed to age for individuals to purchase private insurance, promotes health savings accounts tied to high-deductible health plans, establishes high risk pools and eliminates tax penalties for people who do not have insurance and employers that do not offer it. Politico reported on a leaked draft of the legislation on February 24 which provides more detail than the outline released previously by the House for those interested.