IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
“House Republicans are finding increasingly craven ways to make their Repeal and Ripoff bill worse for hardworking Americans,” said DCCC Spokesman Tyler Law. “It’s absolutely mystifying that vulnerable Republicans are going to walk the plank on a repeal bill that will cause such serious pain to their constituents, all without the slightest idea of what it will cost.”
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Little-Noted Provision of GOP Health Bill Could Alter Employer Plans
Wall Street Journal
Many people who obtain health insurance through their employers—about half of the country—could be at risk of losing protections that limit out-of-pocket costs for catastrophic illnesses, due to a little-noticed provision of the House Republican health-care bill to be considered Thursday, health-policy experts say.
The provision, part of a last-minute amendment, lets states obtain waivers from certain Affordable Care Act insurance regulations. Insurers in states that obtain the waivers could be freed from a regulation mandating that they cover 10 particular types of health services, among them maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health treatment and hospitalization.
That could also affect plans offered by large employers, health analysts said.
The ACA prevents employer plans from putting annual limits on the amount of care they will cover, and it bars lifetime limits on the 10 essential benefits. But in 2011, the Obama administration issued guidance stating that employers aren’t bound by the benefits mandated by their state and can pick from another state’s list of required benefits. That guidance was mostly meaningless because the ACA established a national set of essential benefits.