Senate BCRA Incorporating the Graham-Cassidy-Heller Amendment
August 20, 2017
Near the end of July 2017, as the U.S. Senate began voting on various Republican‐sponsored initiatives to rollback the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Senators Graham (R‐South Carolina) and Cassidy (R‐Louisiana) offered an amendment to the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), which Senator Heller (R‐Nevada) later co-sponsored.
The Graham‐Cassidy‐Heller amendment retains many of the harmful provisions in the BCRA including dramatic restructuring of the Medicaid program. The primary distinctive provision is the proposal to establish a “Market‐Based State Grant Program” allocating to states federal funds intended to replace the ACA Medicaid adult expansion, ACA tax credits and cost sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies.