The outlines of a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), released last week by House Speaker Paul Ryan, should scare anyone who has employer-provided health insurance. The reason: it will tax your health benefits.
The Republican plan would:
- Drive up costs for the average family by forcing workers to pay income and payroll taxes on part of the value of their employer-provided insurance. Currently, those plans are tax-free for employees.
- Eliminate the requirement for large employers to provide coverage to their workers.
- Prompt many employers to drop coverage altogether.
- Offer no replacement plan for 30 million Americans who stand to lose their insurance if the ACA is repealed.
Many of the millions of working families that receive their health care coverage through the ACA – also known as Obamacare – will be left uninsured.
The GOP plan also would eliminate subsidies that eligible families receive to purchase insurance and replace them with lesser tax credits, which won’t be enough to help people afford comprehensive coverage.
Also, ACA’s fundamental patient protections wouldn’t be replaced. Insurers would no longer be required to offer plans that limit deductibles, prohibit co-pays for preventive care or have no annual and lifetime caps on benefits.
Insurers would also be allowed to charge those aged 55 and older higher premiums than allowed under the ACA. And the GOP plan would allow women to be charged more than men.
All of this means higher costs for working people who get their coverage through their employers, and for those who by coverage on the open market. In fact, the GOP plan will encourage employers to drop the coverage they offer their employees to reduce their own taxes – and employers will no longer have to pay a penalty for doing so, as they do now.
There’s a lot more that’s wrong about this half-baked plan that we will discuss soon – such as Ryan’s efforts to undermine Medicaid for millions of seniors, working families and people with disabilities. We’ll stay keep you informed as more details are released.
What we do know so far is not good – not for you, not for your family and not for the nation.
“The measures they propose to replace the ACA are a mix of half-measures and failed policies that will do little to provide coverage to the 30 million people who will lose their insurance if the ACA is repealed,” AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders said in a statement. “They want to pay for their plan through a tax hike on middle-class families that could potentially destroy employer-based insurance for nearly 180 million Americans.”
You can read Pres. Saunders’ full statement here.