The Commonwealth Fund has been looking at some Republican suggestions to replace the Affordable Care Act. For instance, the fund notes, tax credits for  buying health insurance in the ACA marketplaces are designed to limit enrollees’ premium contributions to a percentage of their income.  Critics have pushed the idea of replacing those contributions with  “premium support” to give enrollees a fixed subsidy amount—regardless of their premium costs.

In a new analysis for The Commonwealth Fund Blog, Evan Saltzman, of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and Christine Eibner, of RAND,  say that premium-support models could place financial burdens on low-income and older individuals.