House to vote on HSA expansion, permanent repeal of medical device tax
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House Republicans this week plan to approve expanding health savings accounts—a key tenet of the GOP healthcare platform since they were created under President George W. Bush—and significantly change Obamacare's tax credit structure to let subsidies flow to catastrophic plans.
The House will vote on the swath of bills that would significantly expand eligibility and use of HSAs passed July 12 by a sharply divided House Ways & Means Committee. Two Obamacare-focused measures—one that would free up premium tax credits for plans on or off the exchanges including catastrophic coverage and another to delay the health insurance tax — will be up for votes as well.
While the House GOP also plans to pass its repeal of the 2.3% medical device tax—at a cost of $24.4 billion over 10 years, according to the last Congressional Budget Office estimate—the committee-approved moratorium on both the Cadillac tax on high-cost insurance plans and the employer mandate won't get a vote this week.
In total, the measures that passed through the Ways & Means Committee after a contentious two-day markup, largely along party-line vote, would cost $92 billion over 10 years, according to the CBO. Democrats used the price tag to blast the GOP-led push as an expensive effort that would do nothing to shore up the beleaguered Affordable Care Act.
While House Republicans are touting expansion of HSAs as another step in this Congress' "record of working to increase the quality of health coverage and care," the costs involved have made pathway through the Senate uncertain.
But a spokesperson for the Senate Finance Committee on Monday said the committee's Chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is talking to lawmakers of his committee to gauge a way forward on the issue.
"Chairman Hatch has been a longtime advocate of HSAs and has introduced legislation to simplify and expand them," the spokesperson said.
The insurance industry has also come out in strong support of expanding HSAs, and the medical device industry is hoping their House victory will move through the upper chamber. The Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), a trade association for medical device companies, rolled out a television ad blitz in Washington to rally lawmakers.
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