The Senate will potentially vote on block grants for states as part of the GOP’s effort to overhaul healthcare, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said on Wednesday.
The plan, one of many amendments expected to be proposed, would give states block grants that would be an amount of money from the Affordable Care Act that is fair for all states, Cassidy said. He argued allowing states to make their own decisions on healthcare makes more sense.
“It’s easy to imagine that Alaska, which has less than one person per square mile, may have a different solution than Washington, D.C., which has over 100,000 people per square mile… And yet the Affordable Care Act, if you will, treats them both the same,” Cassidy said.
The Affordable Care Act gives 37% of health insurance expenditures to New York, California and Massachusetts, Cassidy said.
“I do think if we can establish some greater sense of equity between the states that our final plan will be more acceptable, not just to Republicans, but to others as well,” he said.
Cassidy, a physician, said he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are putting together the block grant funding legislation and that it may be considered with a conference committee with the House. He added it was unlikely the Congressional Budget Office would have time to score the costs before the ACA repeal vote.
Senate Republican leaders continued through Thursday to try and gain support for a scaled-back version of its healthcare plan, labeled the “skinny repeal” plan.
