The Senate will vote this week on a reconciliation bill that repeals the budgetary heart of Obamacare and restricts funding for Planned Parenthood. This is a vast improvement over the House-passed bill, which restricts Medicaid funding for abortion providers but neglects to repeal the core provisions in Obamacare.
The Senate bill repeals most of the new spending programs, including the premium subsidies and Medicaid expansion, and most of the taxes. The bill also eliminates the individual and employer mandate penalties, repeals the Obamacare risk corridor and reinsurance programs that can be used to bailout private insurers, and sets up a transition period for Congress and the next president to replace the health care law with a proposal that reduces costs for families and the federal government. Finally, the bill restricts Medicaid funding for abortion providers affiliated with Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The House’s anemic opening bid was blamed on a procedural hurdle unique to the Senate known as the “Byrd rule,” which prohibits provisions that are extraneous to the budget process from being included in reconciliation bills. Before the House passed their bill, we warned that their assumptions about what can be accomplished using reconciliation in the Senate were incorrect.
While we know that the Senate can go farther on repeal, this bill is a strong down payment toward that goal and toward stopping funding for Planned Parenthood.
