Yesterday I posted a diary, which received quite a bit of attention, about what I’ve dubbed her “ACA 2.0” healthcare bill introduced by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and a half-dozen colleagues, including Bernie Sanders.
Two weeks earlier, I had posted a similar diary about a different bill introduced by Democrats in the House...which I had also dubbed “ACA 2.0”.
The moniker is apt in each case, as you’ll see below—they’re very similar in many areas, although there are some differences as well.
A year ago I wrote up my own "wish list" of 22 recommendations for fixing, improving, strengthening and expanding the Affordable Care Act (it's officially 20 items but two of them really should have been split into two entries apiece). I called it "If I Ran the Zoo", and it received quite a bit of praise, even though I didn't come up with most of them myself; it was mostly a compilation of ideas which had been floating around progressive healthcare wonk circles for awhile.
In any event, now that the Republican "ACA stabilization bill" (Alexander-Collins) appears to be dead and buried, I figured it might be helpful to line up both the House and Senate versions of the ACA 2.0 bills to see how they compare to each other as well as to my own list of recommendations.
There are some differences between the two bills even in areas where they both check off the box (the new proposed CSR formulas are different, for instance), but I tried keeping it as simple as I could. I threw in Alexander-Collins as well for the hell of it.
Pink cells are either deal-breakers or a net negative in the case of how Alexander-Collins would handle CSR funding. There's still confusion in my head as to whether the A-C language about Short-Term plans would have allowed states to override Trump's expansion of them or to codify Trump's expansion of them. The only item I'm not sure whether I think is helpful or harmful is the "Copper Plan" expansion, so I left that in white.
I’ll keep analyzing/educating people about healthcare data & helping fight Republican efforts to sabotage healthcare coverage, but I need help to do so! If you find my work at ACA Signups of value, please consider supporting it on a recurring basis via Patreon or one-time via GoFundMe, thank you!
P.S. One more point: Several people have noted that even if the Democrats manage to retake both the House and Senate and pass one of these bills, Trump would certainly veto it.
My response to that is...probably. However...you never know. In that scenario he’d be in deep trouble for a variety of reasons, and he might go ahead and