Summary of American Health Care Act
The House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees announced the American Health Care Act (AHCA) on March 6,2017 as a replacement to Obamacare. This Bill is being introduced through the Fiscal Year 2017 budget reconciliation process and is not a complete replacement plan. It is important to remember that this is just a Bill and has not passed yet. However, we believe it is important to keep you as informed as possible on what changes could be taking place.
There are many aspects of the Obamacare/ The Affordable Care Act (ACA) that will remain unchanged under the new AHCA plan. Some of these include:
- Retaining "Private Market Rules", meaning; requirement to guarantee issue coverage, prohibition on discriminatory premiums for pre-existing condition exclusions, and the requirement to extend dependent coverage to age 26 will all remain unchanged.
- Requirement to cover the 10 essential health benefit categories will remain unchanged.
- Prohibition on lifetime and annual dollar limits is unchanged.
- Requirement for individual and small group plans to cover preventative benefits with no cost sharing is unchanged.
- Prohibition on gender rating is not changed
- Wellness incentives permitted under the ACA is unchanged
- Minimum medical loss ratio standards for all health plans is unchanged.
- Health Insurance Marketplaces, Annual Open Enrollment Periods and Special Enrollment Periods are unchanged.
- No Change to Medicare benefit enhancements or provider/Medicare Advantage plan payment savings
Here are some of the changes being introduced under the new AHCA plan:
- Repeal ACA mandates (2016)
- Repeal Standards for health plan actuarial values (2020)
- Repeal premium and cost sharing subsides (2020)
- Replace ACA income-based tax credits with flat tax credits adjusted for age.
- Impose late enrollment penalty for people who don't stay continuously covered
- Repeal funding for Prevention and Public Health Fund at the end of Fiscal Year 2018
- Increase annual tax free contribution limit for Health Savings Accounts
- Eliminate enhanced FMAP for Medicaid expansion as of January 2020
- Convert Federal Medicaid funding to a per capita allotment and limit growth beginning 2020 using 2016 as a base year
- Repeal Medicare HI tax increase and other ACA revenue provisions
- Prohibit federal funding for Planned Parenthood clinics.
Again, this is just a quick outline of some of the AHCA bill. You can read more about these bullet points by clicking the links below. Also, feel free to call us at the office with any questions or concerns you might have. We will be sure to update any information as we obtain it.
Read more on the Kaiser Family Foundation Summary of AHCA.
