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This summary describes key provisions of a proposal by Senators Graham, Cassidy, Heller, and Johnson. drafted as an amendment in the nature of a substitute to HR 1628, the House-passed bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Two months ago it became clear that the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Senate Republican leadership’s attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, lacked the votes to pass. That legislation combined many worthy reforms to the structure of American health care, with $904 billion in cuts to Medicaid spending and subsidies for the purchase of plans on the exchanges. As a result, many powerful groups stood to lose from the passage of legislation, while few stood to immediately profit from its enactment. Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy have recognized that fixing the non-group health-insurance market and refocusing...

With most Republicans backing the Graham/Cassidy healthcare bill, there is at least one Republican senator who's still vocal in his opposition. His name? Senator Rand Paul. Unlike his colleagues, who don't take their promises to American voters seriously, Senator Paul continues to call for the complete and total repeal of ObamaCare, the horrendous health care bill pushed through Congress by former President Obama and his Democratic allies. I was thinking this all sounds familiar...amnesty?#GrahamCassidyِ: Amnesty for Obamacare. — Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) September 19, 2017 "No one wants to repeal ObamaCare more than I do," the senator from Kentucky writes...

Former President Barack Obama said Wednesday it is "aggravating" to see the Republican-led Congress continue with its attempts to overhaul Obamacare, efforts he suggested would inflict "real human suffering" on the American people. "When I see people trying undo that hard-won progress, for the 50th or 60th time, with bills that would raise costs or reduce coverage or roll back protections for older Americans or people with pre-existing conditions — the cancer survivor, the expectant mom, or the child with autism, or asthma for whom coverage once again would be unattainable — it is aggravating," Obama said during a keynote...

Former President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned that Republican-backed efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act would cause “real human suffering” and said “people are alive today" because of his signature legislation. “So when I see people trying to undo that hard-won progress for the 50th or 60th time, with bills that would raise costs or reduce coverage or roll back protections for older Americans or people with pre-existing conditions, the expecting mom or the child with autism or asthma for whom coverage would once again be almost unattainable, it is aggravating,” Obama said at an event hosted by the...

New York (CNN)Former President Barack Obama said Wednesday there are no practical benefits to a bill Republicans are considering to replace the Affordable Care Act. Speaking in New York, Obama said the bill would increase costs and strip coverage from vulnerable Americans. "When I see people trying to undo that hard-won progress, for the 50th or 60th time, with bills that will raise costs, reduce coverage and roll back protections for older Americans and people with pre-existing conditions ... it is aggravating," Obama said during an event sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.Obama said it was essential to...

Fifteen Republican governors sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging the Senate to pass the Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal and replace Obamacare through block grants to the states. The letter argued that “Obamacare is broken and the states are the best place to fix it.” Support for Graham-Cassidy has grown exponentially in the past couple of weeks. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence endorsed the bill and continue to reach out to governors and senators to get their support for the legislation. Speaker Paul Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and House Freedom Caucus Chairman...

WASHINGTON — A last-ditch Republican effort to repeal Obamacare picked up steam on Monday as a key senator opened the door to supporting the bill, which is popularly known as Graham-Cassidy. The GOP got a boost when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was one of three Republican "no" votes in July that derailed the last GOP health care effort, said he might "reluctantly" vote for the bill if his governor supported it. Democrats and health care advocacy groups opposed to the legislation, which include AARP and the American Heart Association, are taking the latest Republican push very seriously. Republicans lawmakers...

A Pulitzer Prize Winning Wall Street Journal Reporter who asked Russia for Information on Hillary Clinton was found dead 2 days later. Wall Street Journal writer/reporter Joseph Rago was found dead in his apartment on July 20th 2017. He was reportedly investigating Hillary’s involvement in the purchase of Russian drug company Veropharm by Abbot Labs at a time in 2014 when sanctions against Russia would have prevented the sale.

Millions of people who buy individual health insurance policies and get no financial help from the Affordable Care Act are bracing for another year of double-digit premium increases, and their frustration is boiling over. Some are expecting premiums for 2018 to rival a mortgage payment. What they pay is tied to the price of coverage on the health insurance markets created by the Obama-era law, but these consumers get no protection from the law's tax credits, which cushion against rising premiums. Instead they pay full freight and bear the brunt of market problems such as high costs and diminished competition.

The Trump administration is slashing funding for ObamaCare enrollment outreach. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials announced on a call with reporters Thursday that funding for advertising and other outreach for ObamaCare enrollment will be cut from $100 million last year to $10 million this year. A department official argued the administration is seeing "diminishing returns" from ObamaCare spending. Officials also pointed to ObamaCare's shortcomings to justify the cuts. “A health-care system that has caused premiums to double and left nearly half of our counties with only one coverage option is not working," said HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley....

Remember Jonathan Gruber?  The loathsome, contemptuous architect of Obamacare has been caught out by Vermont's attorney general for corruption in a fraudulent billing scheme.  According to the Daily Caller, Gruber sent out double-invoices and invoices for work that was never done in a disgusting scheme to foist single-payer insurance onto Vermont a couple years earlier.  The program was so bad that its left-wing governor scrapped it as something that would never work. The Daily Caller writes: Donovan, the attorney general and still another Democrat, said his office determined that Gruber did, in fact, violate the Vermont Civil False Claims Act, according to the Herald. Specifically, investigators concluded that...

Health care is at the front line in a power play for America. A White House official announced Wednesday that the Trump administration will continue President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional payment of cost-sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies to insurers through August.Despite outward appearances and media commentary, this is not ultimately about health care. The Affordable Care Act is focused on nationwide leveling of American incomes. Redistribution of workers’ wages is taking place through skyrocketing premium subsidies and billions in illegal CSR subsidies.Congress never appropriated money for CSR payments, which are estimated to be around $10 billion in 2018. The payments are...

The Trump administration will make key ObamaCare payments to insurers for the month of August, according to a White House spokesman. Insurers have been asking Congress and the administration for certainty that they’ll continue to receive cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs), which compensate insurers for subsidizing the out-of-pocket costs for low-income enrollees. Instead, the administration has been making the payments on a monthly basis, which total $7 billion for fiscal 2017. President Trump has threatened to end the payments, saying ObamaCare is on track to "implode." Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has said he would like to include funding...

Premiums for the most popular health insurance plans would shoot up 20 percent next year, and federal budget deficits would increase by $194 billion in the coming decade if President Trump carries out his threat to end certain subsidies paid to insurance companies for the benefit of low-income people, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday. The subsidies reimburse insurers for reducing deductibles, co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs that low-income people pay when they visit doctors, fill prescriptions or receive care in hospitals. Even before efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act collapsed in the Senate last month, Mr. Trump began...

The danger of a Republican bailout of Obamacare is mounting with every passing day. Moderate Republicans calling themselves the Problem Solvers Caucus are quietly negotiating with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to throw a multibillion-dollar lifeline to the Obamacare insurance exchanges. This bailout, of course, would be an epic betrayal by the Republican Party, which has promised to repeal and replace the financially crumbling health law. Obamacare's apologists object to the term "bailout" for this rescue package. The left prefers the euphemism "stabilizing the insurance market." They claim this is merely a payment to low-income families to help...

Rep. Jim Jordan said Friday that he’s pushing a clean Obamacare repeal bill in the House in an end-run move around leadership. “It’s the same exact legislation we passed 18 months ago — we all voted for, the Senate voted for. We want to bring this to the floor. Our leadership won’t do that. So the only way to go around them is to start what’s called a discharge petition,” Mr. Jordan, Ohio Republican and a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said on Fox News. Mr. Jordan said he plans to begin gathering signatures for the petition Friday, and...

The Trump administration is now confronted with the challenge of deciding how to oversee ObamaCare, a law it fiercely opposes but that is still on the books. With the Senate’s failure to repeal the healthcare law last month, the Trump administration now has pressing questions to answer about how it will manage a system that provides insurance to more than 10 million people. President Trump has threatened to cancel key ObamaCare payments to insurers as part of an effort to make the health law “implode.” But he is yet to follow through on that threat, leaving insurers in a state...

Subsidizing Failure: For seven years Republicans have solemnly promised to abolish the financially crumbling ObamaCare law. But now that they have struck out, many in the GOP are working behind closed doors to bail out the very program they say they hate. If they moderate wing of the party prevails and rescues the ObamaCare entitlement, the law will be permanently enshrined into the federal budget only to eat up more tax dollars year after year. What is worse, the deal the Republican surrender caucus is negotiating does almost nothing to actually roll back ObamaCare, provide consumers with more choices, or...

The individual healthcare mandate requires every American to buy health insurance or pay a fine. In 2016, 6.5 million Americans chose to pay the fine rather than sign up for insurance on the Obamacare exchanges... In addition to those who pay the fine rather than buy the mandated levels of insurance, 15 million people would drop their Obamacare coverage if it were legal to do so. This does not necessarily mean that these individuals want to go without insurance. Obamacare requires every insurance policy to cover a set of what it defines as Essential Health Benefits.[2] The more benefits that...