In Part V of our blog series, Very Opaque to Slightly Transparent: Shedding Light on the Future of Healthcare, we outlined some of the key provisions of the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Roughly two weeks after our post was published, GOP congressional leadership pulled the legislation from a floor vote, recognizing that the bill did not have sufficient support to pass in the U.S. House of Representatives. Nevertheless they persisted, and an amendment to the legislation negotiated in substantial part by Representatives Tom MacArthur and Mark Meadows injected new life into the AHCA. The so-called “MacArthur Amendment” sought to bridge the gap between conservative Republican members of the House Freedom Caucus and more moderate GOP members of the House, and an additional amendment – the “Upton Amendment” – helped seal the deal. With those two amendments attached, the bill narrowly cleared the House on a party-line vote (albeit with some GOP defectors), 217-213.
Continue Reading Part VI: An Update on the American Health Care Act