American Health Care Act of 2017
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The American Health Care Act of 2017 (H.R. 1628), referred to by the acronym AHCA and nicknamed variously as Trumpcare,Ryancare,Republicare, and pejoratively Obamacare-Lite, is a United States Congress bill to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is based on a plan first publicly released by House Republicans on March 6, 2017, and the first part of what its proponents claim is a 3-phase plan to repeal the act.
The AHCA is a budget reconciliation bill that is part of the 2017 federal budget process; this status means that it cannot be filibustered in the United States Senate and can thus pass the Senate with a simple majority of votes. It would repeal the parts of the Affordable Care Act within the scope of the federal budget, including provisions contained within the Internal Revenue Code such as the "individual mandates" (in Sec. 205), employer mandates (in Sec. 206) and various taxes (Section 201 et. seq.), and also modifications to the federal Medicaid program (in Sections 111-116 and 121).
On May 4, 2017, the United States House of Representatives voted to pass the American Health Care Act (and thereby repeal most of the Affordable Care Act) by a narrow margin of 217 to 213, sending the bill to the Senate for deliberation. The Senate has indicated they will write their own version of the bill, instead of voting on the House version.
The ACA, a major reform of health care in the United States, was passed by the 111th United States Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in 2010. At the time, both houses of Congress and the presidency were controlled by the Democratic Party. During the 2012 presidential election, Republican nominee Mitt Romney, running against Obama, promised to repeal the ACA. After Romney's defeat, the ACA remained in effect for the duration of Obama's presidency despite Republican efforts to repeal it. In the 114th United States Congress, Republicans passed a bill that would have repealed much of the ACA, but the bill was vetoed by President Obama. After winning the 2016 presidential election, President Donald Trump promised to "repeal and replace" the ACA with a new law. The 2016 elections left Republicans in control of the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government, but with fifty-two seats in the one-hundred member Senate, Republicans would still have to rely on at least some Senate Democrats to overcome a filibuster. However, Senate rules provide for a special budget rule called reconciliation, which allows certain budget-related bills to bypass the filibuster and be enacted with a simple majority vote. Republican leaders were seeking to pass the AHCA through the Senate by using the reconciliation rule.
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