GOP staff on a key committee conceded that the Republican leadership’s new healthcare plan would not require Medicaid insurers to cover mental health in certain plans.
The House Energy & Commerce Committee’s GOP staff was questioned over mental health benefits during a marathon markup session Thursday on the Ameircan Health Care Act. The staff conceded that certain Medicaid plans would not have to cover mental health, which it currently has to do in Obamacare.
The question surrounded essential health benefits. Obamacare mandates that insurers cover certain things on plans offered on the individual market, which is for people who don’t get insurance through work.
The bill keeps those essential health benefits intact in a procedural move that would allow Republicans to use reconciliation to avoid a Democratic filibuster and move it through the Senate.
However, the bill does cut the essential health benefit requirements for Medicaid plans. The bill would keep the Medicaid expansion in place until 2020.
Committee Chairman Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said that the patient stability funds given out to states could help fill that gap. The fund would provide about $100 billion over the next decade to states for healthcare that they need to give out.
“Multiple state decision makers can make those decisions on how those funds could be spent based on the allowable expenditures,” he said.
Rep. Tim Murphy also noted that the bill doesn’t impact recent legislation passed last year aimed at expanding mental health treatment options.
But Democrats argued the patient fund will not be enough to help states.
“Governors are simply to going to be able to give all of the benefits to those 11 million people that they now are required to get under the Affordable Care Act,” said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., referring to the number of people who got coverage under the Medicaid expansion.
