Mr. Hatch, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Mr. Brady, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, propose funding cost-sharing subsidies for two years while lifting the individual insurance mandate from 2017 to 2021. The employer mandate would be retroactively lifted from 2015 and 2017, and employers would be exempt from penalties if they didn’t provide insurance during that timeframe.
There would be unnamed “pro-life protections” for insurers who want to receive the subsidies. The bill would also increase the maximum contribution limit for health savings accounts.
“As I have said all along, if Congress is going to appropriate funds for [cost-sharing subsidies], we must include meaningful structural reforms that provide Americans relief from Obamacare,” Mr. Hatch said in a statement.
The full legislative language of the bill will be released in the coming days.
Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., unveiled a bipartisan bill Oct. 17 to fund cost-sharing subsidies while also giving states increased flexibility for innovation waivers, though many Republicans in Congress believed its concessions did not do enough to undermine the ACA.
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