Health Care Marketplace Overhaul – Passage

Passage of the bill that would make extensive changes to the 2010 health care overhaul law, by effectively repealing the individual and employer mandates as well as most of the taxes that finance the current system. It would, in 2020, convert Medicaid into a capped entitlement that would provide fixed federal payments to states and end additional federal funding for the 2010 law's joint federal-state Medicaid expansion. It would prohibit federal funding to any entity, such as Planned Parenthood, that performs abortions and receives more than $350 million a year in Medicaid funds. As amended, it would give states the option of receiving federal Medicaid funding as a block grant with greater state flexibility in how the funds are used, and would require states to establish their own essential health benefits standards. It would allow states to receive waivers to exempt insurers from having to provide certain minimum benefits, would provide $8 billion over five years for individuals with pre-existing conditions whose insurance premiums increased because the state was granted a waiver to raise premiums based on an individual's health status, and would create a $15 billion federal risk sharing program to cover some of the costs of high medical claims.