Roundup: CBPP’s Analyses of the Reconciliation Package

Updated December 1 to reflect anticipated Senate action on the reconciliation bill.

The House has passed and the Senate this week is expected to consider budget reconciliation legislation to repeal important components of health reform. We’ve collected our key analyses of the House reconciliation legislation here:

• The Excise Tax on High-Cost Health Plans Should Stay
  The so-called Cadillac tax helps slow health care costs while paying for expanding health coverage to more Americans. While some changes deserve consideration, the tax has a strong policy rationale, and repealing it would be unwise.
• CBO: Individual Mandate Repeal Would Undo Historic Health Coverage Gains
  Repealing the requirement that most individuals have insurance or pay a penalty would reverse much of the historic progress the nation has made in reducing the ranks of the uninsured.
• Repealing Employer Mandate Would Weaken Job-Based Coverage, Increase Uninsured
  Ending the requirement that employers with more than 50 full-time-equivalent employees provide affordable, comprehensive coverage to their workers would erode employer-sponsored insurance and increase the ranks of the uninsured.
• House Bill Would Eliminate Critical Public Health and Prevention Funding
  Eliminating health reform’s Prevention and Public Health Fund would defund critical investments in areas such as responding to infectious diseases, reducing tobacco use, and immunizing children.
• Defunding Planned Parenthood Would Undermine Women’s Care in Medicaid
  Barring federal funding for Planned Parenthood would have a devastating impact on women’s access to health care services — especially family planning services — through Medicaid, causing nearly 400,000 low-income women to lose access to care.
• Excise Tax on Medical Devices Should Not Be Repealed
  The 2.3-percent excise tax on medical devices plays an important role in paying for health reform and arguments for repeal are based on misinformation.
• Independent Payment Advisory Board Will Help Reduce Health Costs
  IPAB, a presidentially appointed commission charged with developing ways to slow the growth of Medicare spending, serves as an important backstop to reduce health costs.

• The Spurious Rationale for Killing the Public Health Fund
  The reconciliation bill  would abolish health reform’s Prevention and Public Health (PPH) Fund because, as Health Subcommittee Chairman Joe Pitts put it, it’s “a slush fund that the Health and Human Services [HHS] Secretary can spend from without any Congressional oversight or approval.”  That assertion is baseless.