Senate Stimulus Bill Sweetens COBRA Subsidy

Title II, Subtitle I: Exchange Grant Program

This provision would provide $20 million in grant funding that could be used to modernize existing, state-based Affordable Care Act public exchange programs, such as Covered California, Access Health, Connecticut’s Access Health CT or Washington state’s Washington Healthplanfinder exchange.

Title IX, Subtitle A, Part 5: Credits for Paid and Family Sick Leave

This provision would reimburse employers for letting workers take the kinds of paid COVID-19-related leave required by the federal Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act. An employer could deduct cash spent on COVID-19-related sick leave from federal employment tax obligations.

Title IX, Subtitle A, Part 7: Premium Tax Credit

This provision would expand the Affordable Care Act premium tax credit program for 2021 and 2022.

Today, people who earn more than 400% of the federal poverty level cannot use ACA premium tax credits to pay for health coverage, even if premiums for the coverage available would eat up a large share of their income.

Under the H.R. 1319 premium tax credit provision, the government would cap what high-income people have to pay for individual or family health coverage purchased through an ACA public exchange at a maximum of 8.5% of income. High-income exchange plan users could qualify for ACA premium tax credit subsidies if their premium payments exceed that threshold.

Another section would have ACA public exchange programs treat displaced workers who are collecting unemployment benefits in 2021 and who use ACA public exchange plan coverage as if they had income at 133% of the federal poverty level. The provision would help unemployed people qualify for rich health insurance subsidies even if, under the usual ACA exchange program rules, they would be classified as earning too much to get premium tax credit subsidies.