Alex Azar II, the new head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), says federal commercial health insurance subsidies could look a lot different in 2020 than in 2019.

In the new Trump administration budget proposal, HHS spending on the major Affordable Care Act insurance subsidy programs could be about the same in 2019 as in 2018.

But the administration is calling for a shift to a new, state-based Market-Based Health Care Grant (MBHCG) program in 2020, and the MBHCG shift would lead to big changes in 2020, Azar told members of the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday, at hearing on the HHS 2019 budget proposal.

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Allison Bell

Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.