What's The Senate To Do With The House Health Care Legislation?

The party in power often overreaches. House Republicans did just that when they voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a flawed alternative that threatens the health coverage of millions of Americans. The Republicans’ replacement would make insurance more expensive for most seniors, limit federal assistance to those middle-income families who struggle the most to pay for coverage and give states the ability to cover fewer people under Medicaid. Instead of threatening coverage for those Americans who need to most help securing health insurance, Republicans would have been smarter to fix some of the obvious flaws in the Affordable Care Act. And Democrats would have been just as wise to join them. First, eliminate the Independent Payment Advisory Board. IPAB was established to slow the growth of Medicare. The Affordable Care Act gives the panel broad discretion to reduce Medicare spending once the program eclipses a certain threshold. IPAB is unnecessarily bureaucratic and should be scrapped. Arbitrary price-setting is rarely successful. Republicans and Democrats oppose IPAB because it threatens to limit what Medicare covers. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the number two Senate Republican, and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, introduced separate bills this year to block the board from forming. Sen. Wyden warned “it would be a huge mistake” to allow the panel to push “harmful cuts to Medicare with minimal inpu...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news