The Upton Amendment to the ACA Repeal Bill Will Have Almost No Effect

[n2doc]

House Republicans are proposing to invest additional money in bad policy. Moderate members have been offered $8 billion more in the American Health Care Act, or AHCA, that could help fund high-risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions, a policy that has failed to provide adequate health coverage in the past. With the deal, up to $138 billion could go to high-risk pools under the AHCA, but that additional $8 billion would subsidize just 76,000 more people.

The high-risk pool plan is an attempt to cover up for another provision in the bill, via an amendment by New Jersey Rep. Tom MacArthur (R), that would allow states to easily waive protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions in the individual market if they experienced a gap in coverage.

The Center for American Progress found that the $130 billion of funding already in the AHCA would be insufficient to sustain even a small high-risk pool. Supposing the size of the pool was about 5 percent of the small-group and individual markets, the AHCA would need to provide a total of $327 billion to offer moderately subsidized high-risk pool coverage for those 1.5 million people. The current version of the AHCA falls $200 billion short of that, and the $8 billion promised to House Republican moderates would fill in just 4 percent of the funding gap.

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https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2017/05/03/431827/upton-amendment-aca-repeal-bill-will-almost-no-effect/

[Freethinker65]

1. And Upton is well aware of that fact

He got something else in return, or the assurance that he would not lose something dear to him (campaign donor money).