House GOP unveils health care bill without ObamaCare subsidies extension

 House Republicans on Friday unveiled a health care bill they will bring to a vote next week that includes items that are broadly popular in the party, like cost sharing reductions and reforms to the pharmacy benefit manager industry, but will exclude extension of expiring enhanced ObamaCare subsidies.

House GOP leaders will allow an amendment vote on extending expiring Obamacare subsidies, a GOP leadership aide signaled, in a concession to moderates who had been calling to go on the record on the matter. The exact contours of the amendment are not yet settled.

“We expect that there will be an amendment that I believe is being worked on. So, the process will allow for that amendment,” a House Republican leadership aide said.

Provisions in the bill, dubbed the “Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act,” include policies that have already cleared key committees, House Republican leadership aides said.

The bill will appropriate funds to pay for “cost-sharing reductions” in ObamaCare, a complicated move that will lower premiums for some people but decrease the overall amount of subsidies and make premiums more expensive for others. Such a provision was stripped from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” over the summer because it violated Senate rules.

The bill will also include a provision to make it easier for businesses to fund their own insurance plans, and protect themselves from going bankrupt from large, expensive claims.

It will expand association health plans, and will also include provisions to make the PBM industry more transparent. 

The bill will not include an expansion of health savings accounts that have been floated in several other Republican health care plans. A GOP leadership aide said that more conversations on health care will continue in the future.

Republicans are fiercely divided on the expiring ObamaCare subsidies. Conservatives argue they are too costly and prop up a system they despise, while moderates say letting the subsidies expire is political suicide. They are set to expire at the end of the year without action, leading to drastically increased premium payments for 22 million Americans. 

Because of that division — and opposition to the subsidies from Republican leaders themselves — GOP leaders opted against including a subsidy extension in their health care bill. But after moderates rebelled by trying to force votes on subsidy extension plans through discharge petitions, negotiations started on allowing an amendment vote.

Any such amendment vote would be designed to give moderate Republicans political cover, but would have little chance of becoming law. Democrats are not expected to support such an amendment, and even if it was adopted, it would be a poison pill for the larger GOP health care plan, eroding support from conservatives.

“Their health care package, as I understand it, is likely to be a disaster and actually not enhance the health care of the American people. It will take away from it. So it’s not clear to me that, even if it’s amended … that it will actually solve the problem of addressing the Republican health crisis,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told MS NOW on Friday.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5646973-house-gop-health-care-bill-obamacare/