The House has put new Affordable Care Act public exchange system reporting rules in a critical new government funding package.
One provision could show how many federal employees really work on ACA programs.
Another provision could give observers much more information about ACA public exchange enrollment while the open enrollment period is under way.
(Related: DOL Fiduciary Rule Spared Death in Spending Bill)
The House Rules Committee has revealed the possible contents of the funding measure, which is really a proposed amendment to an unrelated bill, H.R. 244, in a collection of H.R. 244 documents posted on its website.
The committee prepares legislation to go to the House floor.
The committee plans to start packaging H.R. 244 for floor action at 3 p.m. Tuesday. The committee posts live video of most of its meetings on the web.
Congress passed one emergency government funding bill Friday. That new law was enough to keep the government running for just one more week.
House Republicans worked with House Democrats to hammer out the 1,665-page legislation now under consideration, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, in an effort to provide enough funding to keep the government open at least until September.
House leaders intend to bring the package to the floor by attaching it as an amendment to H.R. 244, the HIRE Vets Act bill.
The funding amendment would not make major changes to Affordable Care Act rules and programs, but it would make some small changes. Here’s a look at some of the proposed changes.
1. Preventive Health Fund Spending Report
Section 219 of Title II would require the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to publish detailed web reports on how HHS uses the preventive health cash provided by Section 4002 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
PPACA is one of the two laws in the ACA package.
Critics of the ACA have argued that former President Barack Obama’s HHS used the PPACA Section 4002 fund as a slush fund, to pay for whatever it wanted to pay for.
2. ACA Program Staffing