Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Even People With Employer-Sponsored Health Care Will Be Affected By GOP's Plan
The Republican proposal to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, which is expected to receive a vote in the House on Thursday, would bring big changes to health-care coverage for many Americans. Here are some of the most important ones. (Armour and Hackman, 5/3)
Many people who obtain health insurance through their employers鈥攁bout half of the country鈥攃ould be at risk of losing protections that limit out-of-pocket costs for catastrophic illnesses, due to a little-noticed provision of the House Republican health-care bill to be considered聽Thursday, health-policy experts say. The provision, part of a last-minute amendment, lets states obtain waivers from certain Affordable Care Act insurance regulations. Insurers in states that obtain the waivers could be freed from a regulation mandating that they cover 10 particular types of health services, among them maternity care, prescription drugs, mental health treatment and hospitalization. (Armour and Hackman, 5/4)
While House Republicans lined up votes Wednesday for a Thursday showdown over their bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Vickie Glenn sat in her Murphysboro, Ill., office and prayed for it to fail. Ms. Glenn, a Medicaid coordinator for Tri-County Special Education, an Illinois cooperative that helps more than 20 school districts deliver special education services to students, was worried about an issue that few in Congress were discussing: how the new American Health Care Act, with its deep cuts to Medicaid, would affect her 2,500 students. (Green, 5/3)