House Votes to Delay ACA Taxes in Spending Deal, Senate Fate Uncertain

The House passed an HR Policy-supported short-term spending bill that would delay the Affordable Care Act’s Cadillac tax for two years, from 2020 to 2022, and fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years.  HR Policy has aggressively lobbied for repeal or delay of the Cadillac tax.  While supporting the measure because of the Cadillac tax delay, we urged Congress to continue to work toward a permanent authorization of DACA, which has been a stumbling block in the government funding negotiations.  (See seperate story below.)  The bill would also suspend the medical device tax for two years (2018 and 2019), suspend the health insurance tax on fully-funded individual and group plans for 2019 (the tax would remain in effect for 2018), and fund the federal government through February 16.  It passed the House on a bipartisan vote of 230-197, with six Democrats voting for the measure.  While the Senate voted 97 to 2 to begin debate on the House measure, it is unclear what steps it will take next.  Senate Democrats would like the bill to address DACA and fund CHIP for 10 years, or pass a "clean" continuing resolution that provides another week of time to negotiate a deal.