{"id":289901,"date":"2025-11-17T23:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/289901\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T23:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:48:09","slug":"replace-aca-tax-credits-with-hsas-sen-bill-cassidy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/289901\/","title":{"rendered":"Replace ACA tax credits with HSAs: Sen. Bill Cassidy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sen. Bill Cassidy<\/a> on Monday proposed replacing enhanced Affordable Care Act<\/a> premium tax credits with pre-paid health savings accounts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Louisiana Republican’s proposal comes as lawmakers scramble to find a remedy for skyrocketing costs<\/a> of Obamacare health insurance premiums.<\/p>\n

The boosted ACA tax credits<\/a>, which this year have lowered the cost of Obamacare<\/a> plans for about 20 million Americans, are set to expire<\/a> at the end of December.<\/p>\n

Cassidy’s proposal would allow people who signed up for a so-called Bronze Plan<\/a> through Obamacare marketplaces to get a pre-paid HSA, funded in part by the lapsed tax credits.<\/p>\n

While HSAs would not help pay for monthly premiums, Cassidy told reporters that they would help reduce the cost of health-care expenses, such as co-payments, deductibles, and coinsurance.<\/p>\n

Bronze plans generally cover 60% of an enrollee’s health costs, with the enrollee responsible for paying the remaining 40% out of pocket.<\/p>\n

“Is there anybody who would not want to take a large portion of that, which we’re using to help Americans purchase health care, and give it directly to the individual, so that 100% of its used to purchase health care, as opposed to, as opposed to giving that money to the insurance company, of which 20% goes for profit and overhead?” asked Cassidy, who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.<\/p>\n

The federal government shut down on Oct. 1, and remained shut down for weeks when Senate Democrats refused to vote for a stopgap funding bill because it did not include an extension of the enhanced ACA credits.<\/p>\n

Last week, seven Democrats and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with them, agreed to end the 43-day-long shutdown by voting for a funding bill. <\/p>\n

Their agreement came after Senate Majority Leader John Thune, D-.S.C., promised<\/a> to hold a vote by mid-December on a bill of Democrats’ choosing to extend the tax credits.<\/p>\n

But even a temporary extension of the ACA credits faces a near-impossible obstacle course to being passed into law, in part because it would require Republican support. <\/p>\n

GOP members of Congress have long tried to gut the Affordable Care Act, which became law under President Barack Obama with only Democratic votes.<\/p>\n

Cassidy said he is talking with other senators<\/a>, as well as the Trump administration, about how his HSA plan would work.<\/p>\n

With roughly a month to go before a planned vote, lawmakers have little time to finalize their plans before presenting them.<\/p>\n

Yet Cassidy’s plan is already meeting with some resistance from some Democrats and health-care policy experts.<\/p>\n

Larry Levitt, an expert with the KFF health policy research group, on Sunday responded to an interview Cassidy did with CBS’ “Face the Nation.”<\/p>\n

“Giving ACA enrollees cash in flexible spending accounts would help with out-of-pocket health costs like deductibles,” Levitt tweeted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“But, they wouldn’t do someone much good if they can’t afford health insurance to begin with and end up getting sick.”<\/p>\n

On Monday, Levitt tweeted, “Without the enhanced ACA premium tax credits, people would have a harder time buying plans with affordable deductibles.”<\/p>\n

“But, I do not believe this plan from @SenBillCassidy<\/a> would cause a premium death spiral in the same way as other health account proposals that’ve been floated,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

Death spirals occur when healthy people exit a health-care insurance plan, leading to ever-rising premiums for less healthy people who remain in the plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sen. Bill Cassidy on Monday proposed replacing enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits with pre-paid health savings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[4615,161,49,48,84,8542,392,77801,117708,714,1236],"class_list":["post-289901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-breaking-news-politics","tag-business-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-health-insurance","tag-healthcare","tag-john-thune","tag-patient-protection-and-affordable-care-act","tag-politics","tag-social-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}