Under construction

Replacement plan, Patient Freedom Act (source LA Times article)

Features:

• Coverage for pre-existing conditions
• Ban on lifetime and annual limits for benefits
• Coverage of certain preventive services without co-pays
• Coverage of mental health services
• Guarantees black-lung benefits for coal miners
• The federal exchange, healthcare.gov, will continue to operate.
• Dependents still will be permitted to stay on their parents’ employer-sponsored plans until age 26.
• Kills the employer mandate and individual mandate
• Substitutes a “continuous coverage” system for the individual mandate
• Becomes a state-level system
• Progressive states will be like Romneycare
• Regressive states will have junk insurance and claim coverage
• Poor are covered under expanded Medicaid. Federal pays 90% of cost
• Keeps ACA taxes like medical devices, Cadillac plan, high-income surcharge
• Keep individual subsidies
• Makes the law more complicated by an order of magnitude
• No tort reform
• No selling insurance across state lines
• Health care savings components benefit the wealthy

Problems:

• Is there enough funding to the states to make it work?
• What essential benefits will be dropped?
• Continuous coverage requirement would throw some people out of insurance
• Subsidies less tied to income. Rich people benefit. Poor people lose.
• Residents of some states will lose catastrophically