After a dramatic series of failed Senate votes in July, there’s one repeal-and-replace plan for the Affordable Care Act left standing. Trump is pushing for a vote, per Politico, and John McCain has announced his support, but the bill has yet to gain significant traction.
The proposal, crafted by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), essentially turns control of the health-care markets over to the states. Rather than funding Medicaid and subsidies directly, that money would be put into a block grant that a state could use to develop any health-care system it wants. It also allows states to opt out of many ACA regulations. “If you like Obamacare, you can keep it,” Graham has said, using a common nickname for the health-care law. “If you want to replace it, you can.”
In reality, that may not be true. The Medicaid expansion and subsidy funding would be cut sharply compared to current spending, going to zero in a decade.
“You can’t actually keep the same program if your federal funding is being cut by a third in 2026,” said Aviva Aron-Dine, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And even putting aside the cuts, she said, the block grant structure would fundamentally change the health-care landscape. “[Funding] is capped, so it wouldn’t go up and down with the economy,” when fewer or more people become eligible for subsidies.
Republicans contest this. The drop in funding “gives strong incentives for the states to be more efficient with their program,” said Ed Haislmaier, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. That is, states may be able to maintain the ACA structure and regulations as long as they streamline operations.
If the streamlining turns out to be insufficient, the cuts would hit liberal states the hardest, according to a report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. This is largely because they tend to be the biggest spenders on health care: They’ve expanded Medicaid and aggressively signed people up for marketplace coverage. They have the most to lose.
On the whole, Aron-Dine says, “This is a lot more similar to the [Senate repeal bill] than different. All of them end with devastating cuts to marketplace subsidies, Medicaid, and weakening of consumer protections.”
Haislmaier agreed, pointing out the Cassidy-Graham plan was originally intended as an amendment to the Senate bill.
Here’s the nitty gritty of what would change, compared to the ACA and the Senate plan that failed in July:
Who would need to be covered
Under the Cassidy-Graham plan, the mandates would be eliminated at the federal level. States could choose to keep the measure, replace it or get rid of it completely.
How they would pay for coverage
The federal health insurance subsidies that help most people with ACA marketplace plans afford their coverage would change. This bill would shift those subsidies to the state-level, so people in some states may see their subsidy scaled back or eliminated.
Proposed changes to Medicaid
The bill would restructure Medicaid and decrease its funding. That would make it very difficult for states to maintain the Medicaid expansion.
HENRY KOTULA 