GOP plans to replace ObamaCare with "universal access"

The House leadership aide said that lowering the cost of insurance was a much better way to encourage people to opt in.

“We would like to get to a point where we have what we call universal access, where everybody is able to access coverage to some degree or another,” the aide said. “Over the past six years, if you look at the experience we’ve had with the A.C.A. rollout, chasing coverage doesn’t necessarily yield great outcomes. You can have people going into an exchange, finding out that their pediatrician is no longer available to them.”

The aide said House Republicans had not decided on the future of cost-sharing subsidies that are paid by the federal government to insurance companies. Such subsidies are intended to reduce out-of-pocket costs for millions of low-income people buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act.