Bernie Moreno floats Hyde Amendment ‘audit’ in Obamacare subsidy talks

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) is proposing an audit of whether insurance companies are using federal tax dollars to fund abortions, a legislative compromise meant to jump-start negotiations over enhanced Obamacare subsidies.

The proposal, which would vet the companies’ compliance with the Hyde Amendment, was tucked into bill text that Moreno shared with the rest of an Obamacare working group on Wednesday and would include a “penalty system” for insurers who run afoul of the law.

For weeks, negotiators have agreed on a basic framework to renew the enhanced subsidies, a pandemic-era benefit that expired at the end of last year, but the question of abortion restrictions had emerged as the biggest stumbling block, with Democrats rebuffing Republicans’ insistence that Hyde needed to be tightened to prevent the