Late last week, the U.S. House of Representatives decided to halt further pursuit of legislation - the American Health Care Act (AHCA) - that would have repealed and replaced large portions of the Affordable Care Act, more commonly referred to as "Obamacare."
After several weeks of intense debate between Republicans and Democrats - and concerns from the conservative House Freedom Caucus that the AHCA did not go far enough - House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Donald Trump pulled the bill from being voted on by the House of Representatives once it became clear that it would not garner enough "Yes" votes to pass.
Becker's Hospital Review provides a good overview of this decision and the course of events that led to it. For now, the Affordable Care Act will remain in place - as the path forward for a repeal and replace by Republicans in Congress is uncertain at this time.
So what would the AHCA have done to change American healthcare? The Kaiser Family Foundation has made available a point-by-point tool to compare provisions in this legislation with current law under the Affordable Care Act. Some of the main provisions in the GOP bill were a repeal of the individual mandate for health insurance coverage, an end to Medicaid expansion and a cap on future federal funding for Medicaid, a repeal of tax subsidies to help cover the cost of health insurance, and a repeal of multiple taxes included in the Affordable Care Act - such as the medical device tax.
