Washington, DC
As congressional Republicans move to solidify their Obamacare repeal-and-replace legislation, concern is mounting that their strategies will leave millions of Americans with less financial assistance and more expensive coverage.
A new analysis on Wednesday from the Kaiser Family Foundation projects that the HealthCare.gov insurance marketplace’s average premium subsidy — which people use to help purchase coverage — would shrink by at least 36 percent in 2020 under GOP proposals being considered.
House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way,” the House of Representatives’ discussion draft bill and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s “Empowering Patients First Act” all provide tax credits to help consumers purchase coverage that are based on age rather than need. And the annual growth in those subsidies is based on inflation, not income or cost of coverage as it is under the Affordable Care Act.
In the House draft bill, Kaiser notes, the average tax credit for current marketplace plan members would increase from an estimated $2,957 in 2020 to $3,729 in 2027. Under the existing health law, however, the average tax credit would be much more in 2020, at $4,615. And it would increase to $6,648 in 2027.
In addition, far fewer Americans would have been able to find low-cost marketplace coverage this year if the Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits were based on inflation rather than cost of coverage, according to an Obama administration analysis obtained by McClatchy.
The report, one of the last under former HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, is the latest to suggest that the Republican plan to repeal and replace the health law would not provide the same level of financial assistance for marketplace consumers.
The HHS report was prepared at the request of Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Neal said the HHS report showed “what consumers would really face under Trumpcare.”
“The proposal designed by the Republicans would make health care less affordable for millions of Americans,” he said in the message.
