La Crosse Congressman Ron Kind to get early crack at new GOP healthcare policy

Republicans pushing to get bill through both Houses of Congress.

La Crosse’s Congressman will be one of the first to get a crack at the planned replacement for the federal Affordable Care Act.

Ron Kind is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. The committee will get to work on the American Health Care Act today.

The new bill is the Republican plan for unraveling the Affordable Care Act. 

The push is on to get this bill through both Houses of Congress in a hurry. The Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees are scheduled to vote Wednesday on the ACA overhaul – just two days after it was released.

The Congressional Budget Office, Washington’s official scorekeeper, has not weighed in with estimates of how many people would be covered or what the bill would cost the federal government, reported the New York Times. But several health policy experts have said they believe the policy changes could result in the loss of health insurance for 10 million Americans or more.

Democrats won’t be the only ones pushing back on the health care bill. 

Many conservative Republicans also show signs of resistance, insisting changes to the Affordable Care Act haven’t gone far enough.

Among the many tweaks to current federal health plan is getting rid of the mandate to buy insurance or face fines.

It allows insurance companies to charge higher prices to old customers and less to younger ones.

Repeal of that would be done retroactively for last year. It also gets rid of a number of taxes that support current subsidies like the medical device tax, drug company tax, health insurer tax, and the tax on indoor tanning services.

One of the controversial taxes that would remain in place under the current bill, the so-called Cadillac tax – a tax on high-cost insurance plans, which is something that’s never been implemented.