Pick a Plan: How to replace the Affordable Care Act

Lots of ideas on how to replace certain aspects of the Affordable Care Act have been tossed around in the seven or so years since more right-leaning lawmakers, economists and policy experts began to gripe about the healthcare reform law. Here are some of the suggestions that might come in handy as GOP leaders draft a plan to be presented in the next few weeks. The goal is to introduce a bill before Congress takes a spring break in April.

• Caps federal Medicaid contributions to states based on the number of people enrolled, with payments rising by a fixed percentage regardless of medical cost growth.
• Repeals all ACA taxes that finance the law's premium subsidies, Medicaid expansion and Medicare benefit enhancements in favor of a new tax on employees for the value of employer-sponsored health benefits.
• Establishes refundable premium tax credits based on age rather than income, starting in 2020.
• Eliminates the ACA's minimum essential benefits package and allows states to regulate benefit levels.

• Repeals Medicaid expansion.
• Continues advanced premium tax credits for individual insurance market coverage, albeit with an altered age-based rather than income-based credit structure.
• Allows an insurance company to charge higher premiums to those with pre-existing conditions if an enrollee does not maintain continuous coverage for the18 months prior to enrollment.
• Allows individuals to purchase health insurance offered in another state, provided the insurer meets some basic requirements.

• Repeals the ACA's marketplace subsidies and eliminates the individual and employer mandates.
• Does not eliminate Medicaid expansion.
• Allows states to continue operating under ACA provisions with reduced federal funding.
• Allows individuals to receive tax credits to help them fund health savings accounts while insurers charge higher premiums for people with pre-existing conditions who don't maintain continuous coverage.
• Or states can reject federal assistance altogether while retaining some ACA coverage protections, such as a prohibition against annual and lifetime limits and a requirement to cover people up to age 26 on their parents' plans.

• Repeals the individual and employer mandates, essential health benefits requirements and medical loss ratio requirements.
• Maintains Medicaid expansion.
• Provides a two-year open-enrollment period under which individuals with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage. After that they would still be able to gain coverage, but likely will have to pay higher premiums.
• Provides a $5,000 tax credit to individuals who contribute to health savings accounts.

• Repeals the ACA effectively as a whole, but doesn't reference repealing Medicaid expansion specifically.
• Ends the individual and employer mandates, essential health benefits provisions and the medical loss ratio requirement for insurers.
• Allows insurance to be sold across state lines.

• Repeals the individual mandate.
• Guarantees that no one can be denied coverage or charged higher premiums because of a pre-existing condition as long as they maintain continuous coverage.
• Repeals Medicaid expansion and converts the program to block grants.
• Provides income-related tax credits to low-income individuals and those who do not have access to employer-sponsored health insurance and to those who work in businesses with 100 or fewer employees.