The research arm of House Republican conservatives have laid out a roadmap for how the GOP could structure a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, which they have long vowed to dump.
With the 2016 elections coming up, presidential candidates are under pressure to offer detailed replacement plans, which they have assiduously avoided doing so far.
The plan would rely “on conservative principles and increased state flexibility to transform our top-down healthcare system,” the Republican Study Committee (RSC) says.
The program calls for:
- Fully repealing the ACA to try to increase competition in the marketplace and widen consumer choices.
- Increasing access to affordable and portable healthcare with a standard tax deduction for health insurance.
- Improving insurance access for low-income Americans by expanding federal support for high-risk pools.
- Letting citizens buy health insurance across state lines and small businesses to pool together to negotiate better rates.
- Reforming medical-liability law.
- Investing more in developing biomedical breakthroughs .
- Prohibiting any funds that provide coverage for abortions and continuing to bar federal funds that do, except in certain cases.
- Curbing Medicaid spending by combining some programs and enacting rules to make it more difficult for able-bodied people to get coverage.
