The House Ways and Means Committee is moving to dramatically increase access to Affordable Care Act (ACA) policies for those who lost insurance during the pandemic. According to one survey, that's nearly 3 in 10 Americans. That same survey found that 46% of those who lost coverage at some point in 2020 are still uninsured because of the cost of buying a new plan on the individual market. The House is going to use the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to help those people and at the same time strengthen the Affordable Care Act.
What they intend to do in the legislation is to make Obamacare coverage much more affordable to a larger group of people. That includes providing full subsidies to anyone receiving unemployment benefits to purchase coverage on Healthcare.gov or through the marketplace in their state; expanding the group of people eligible for federal subsidies by extending them to people earning 400% of the poverty level ($51,040 for a single person, $104,800 for a family of four) to make sure they don't have to spend more than 8.5% of their income on premiums; expanding subsidy availability on the other end, to people making up to 150% of the federal poverty level ($19,140 for an individual, $39,300 for a family of four)—many of the people in the Medicaid gap; and for people who want to maintain the coverage they received from their employers, making COBRA more affordable by subsidizing those premiums at 85%.
These changes would fix a couple of long-standing problems with Obamacare on the "affordability" part: the subsidy cliff for people definitely still in solid middle-class income who made just too much to qualify for assistance and, at the other side, helping the people in the Medicaid gap making too much for Medicaid in their states, but too little for the subsidies in the current ACA. Most of these people are in the states that have refused to expand Medicaid, which Congress is also addressing in this legislation by providing incentives to those states to expand.
The COBRA fix is another key one. People who leave their jobs are eligible for coverage under COBRA for up to 36 months, an option many people prefer if they themselves or family members have medical history issues that make not changing up coverage important. But the premiums have to be paid in full by the subscriber, the part that the employer paid for previously as well as the part that was the worker's responsibility. That's very expensive, and now will be 85% more affordable. It's a big deal.
This should help increase enrollments in Obamacare, which President Joe Biden is reopening for a three-month period starting next week, on Feb. 15. In other ACA news, the Biden Department of Justice has withdrawn the previous administration's support for the lawsuit seeking to throw out the law at the Supreme Court. In fact, the Biden Department of Justice argues, the law is indeed constitutional.