Here we go again. This week, another effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is emerging in the U.S. Senate, representing a last-ditch effort to dismantle the law before the September 30th fiscal year deadline under the obscure Federal budget reconciliation process. Like other repeal efforts before it, the Graham-Cassidy Plan would undo the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, which extended health coverage to individuals earning below 138 percent of the Federal poverty level, and ban Medicaid reimbursement for family planning services provided by Planned Parenthood. The plan also allows states the ability to get waivers that let insurers charge sick patients higher premiums for pre-existing conditions and to stop covering certain essential benefits such as maternity care, well-care visits, and preventative screenings. In addition to the Medicaid expansion cuts, the Graham-Cassidy Plan would also drastically cut funding to the rest of the Medicaid program through the use of per-capita caps, which significantly shortchange current state Medicaid spending on non-expansion populations and increase the likelihood that states will need to raise taxes, cut other budget priorities, or make increasingly severe cuts to Medicaid eligibility groups, “optional” benefits like home- and community-based services, and provider payments. For states like Ohio, where coverage was expanded to 723,000 individuals, the Graham-Cassidy Plan would be devastating, rolling back the state’s coverage gains and causing hundreds of thousands of low-income individuals to lose access to health care.
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