One use of the funds may be to provide extra money to states to help move poor people from Medicaid coverage and on to private insurance plans. Seema Verma, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, proposed that idea to some GOP senators on Wednesday night, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan said. Sullivan said Verma called it a “wraparound” plan to provide extra help on the individual market for lower-income people.
Such a plan would be similar to the cost-sharing reductions that are currently in Obamacare, and that lower out-of-pocket costs for people making between 100 percent and 250 percent of the poverty level. The GOP plan would end that help. Legislative text or policy details of Verma’s plan haven’t been made public, and it isn’t clear that there’d be enough funding in the bill to help all the low-income people who’d be moved off Medicaid maintain similar coverage to what Obamacare provides.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.