Matthew Ferry's List: Domestic Politics

• The GOP plan offers its own set of tax credits to help those with lower incomes afford coverage, and like those in the ACA, they would be adjusted for age but not for geography. That means the tax credit would be the same across the nation, even though insurance costs differ widely in different parts of the country.
• The GOP plan also would let insurers charge older people more than the ACA does, which could lower premiums for younger people. The ACA limits premium differences for older people to three times more than those for young people; the GOP proposal would allow premiums for older people to be as much as five times higher, although states could opt for different "age rating," staffers said.
• It would cap Medicaid's currently unlimited funding, except for the elderly and disabled. States would instead get payments based on the number of low-income families and children, described by staffers as the program's "traditional populations." But there apparently would be no plan to continue insurance for people who are currently signing up for Medicaid in the half of states now expanding the program. Instead, those people would be offered tax credits.

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• “It’s one of the few things that could actually disrupt what looks like a strong Republican year,” said William Kristol, editor of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, calling an immigration push “a recipe for disaster.”
• “One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents,” Mr. Cantor said at the time. “It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home.”
• Often the biggest threats to Republicans are primary challenges from more conservative candidates who say that changing the immigration status of someone who is in the country illegally amounts to amnesty for a lawbreaker.
• On the Democratic side, a major question is whether those pushing for a broad immigration overhaul would accept any Republican proposal that falls short of full citizenship for immigrants who are now here illegally. President Obama has said he wants any new immigration legislation to include a path to citizenship for both children and adults.

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