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Latest GOP health care bill strips required coverage of maternity care, hospital visits

Speaker Paul Ryan has been trying to whip the GOP into supporting the bill. Many members of congress will still vote no. Source: Getty Images
Speaker Paul Ryan has been trying to whip the GOP into supporting the bill. Many members of congress will still vote no. Source: Getty Images

The Obamacare repeal bill, the American Health Care Act, has had a few makeovers on its way to the floor for a vote in an effort to make it more likeable.

This AHCA is one of the most “universally detested bills,” as one Republican member of Congress tweeted, and the bill has been earning the ire of moderate Republicans, conservative “Freedom Caucus” Republicans, and, of course, Democrats. This is a bill only a parent would love.

The parents, Speaker Paul Ryan and President Donald Trump, have scrambled to add more to the bill, though it may be like putting lipstick on a pig that will never pass the House if the GOP leadership can’t whip the votes. In what the New York Times described as a “back-room” deal, the GOP re-wrote the bill to remove the ACA’s “essential health benefits” provision, which require insurers to cover 10 basic services. Until recently, the GOP said it would keep this provision, which standardizes coverage, in the AHCA.

Now, the AHCA stipulates that states would decide what essential health benefits must be included in insurance plans.

The Congressional Budget Office updated its analysis of the bill Thursday, but it still scored the bill as including the essential health benefits. So the broad implications of making changes to these benefits are unclear.

But Trump and Ryan supporting a bill that removes standardizing what insurance is has many concerned. According to NBC News’s Benjy Sarlin, the Society of Actuaries noted the removal could create a “race to the bottom” as insurers offer leaner plans with skimpy coverage (since they won’t be required to cover these benefits, which include things like maternity care, pediatric care and hospitalization). For perspective, Yahoo’s Garance Franke-Ruta noted that before the ACA, in 2009, only 13% of health plans for 30-year-old women buying their own plans covered maternity care.

On the flip side, however, is the fact that essential health benefits bumped up premiums by 13% to 17%, according to Axios. Translation: more coverage and better care was not free. Nevertheless, many consumers will probably dislike being stripped of a high standard of coverage after having enjoyed them for seven years. And the already terribly-polling bill—only 17% of the public support it, according to Quinnipiac—may see its popularity sink further.

Ryan and Trump have already made concessions to get more support for the bill. Earlier this week, changes were made to halt states that wanted to expand Medicaid, work requirements for Medicaid were put in, and the tax cuts were moved up one year to 2017. And late Thursday, President Trump issued an ultimatum to GOP holdouts: support the bill or else. Earlier, the President had told the Freedom Caucus’s leader Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), “I’m going to come after you” if you don’t support the AHCA. Meadows currently does not support the bill.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann. Got a tip? Send it to tips@yahoo-inc.com.

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