AHCA and Medicaid Updates

from NDNRC:

This week, the long-awaited ACA replacement plan from congressional Republicans was introduced in the House. We have posted a blog entry entitled “What the AHCA Would Mean for People with Disabilities.” In the blog, we review the American Health Care Act (AHCA) against the eight principles we outlined in our NDNRC statement entitled “Preserve the Protections Provided by the Affordable Care Act.” To read the blog post on the AHCA, click here. The NDNRC statement outlining our eight principles can be found on our website where it is also available in a PDF download by clicking here.

The National Council on Disability (NCD) has released its core principles for health care reform. According to the NCD mission statement, “NCD is an independent federal agency charged with advising the President, Congress, and other federal agencies regarding policies, programs, practices, and procedures that affect people with disabilities.” To read the NCD statement on health care, click here.

Many of the ACA replacement proposals address Medicaid and propose turning Medicaid into a “block grant.” One of our NDNRC partner organizations, The Arc has released a fact sheet looking at how Medicaid block grants would affect people with intellectual and development disabilities. For that fact sheet, click here. For more on Medicaid block grants or per capita caps, check out the statement by the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) here. AAHD is a member of CCD.

As for the AHCA, if you want to read more about the proposed law, you can read Tim Jost’s blog post on Health Affairs entitled “Examining the House Republican ACA Repeal and Replace Legislation” by clicking here.

Previously, we highlighted an interactive tool from the Kaiser Family Foundation which allows you to compare the ACA and some of the proposed replacement plans. This week they added the AHCA so you can compare the ACA with the AHCA and 5 other proposals. That resource is available here.

If you want to learn more about how the AHCA would affect the premium tax credits which are currently available under the ACA, Kaiser has two resources which look at the tax credits. To learn more about these resources, check out our news item here.

The National Academy for State Health Policy has a chart which compares what the AHCA would mean for states in comparison to the ACA. To view this chart, click here.

The Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) blog post this week compares re-insurance with high-risk pools. To read this CHIR blog post, click here.