Axios

The Affordable Care Act used a carrot-and-stick approach to get healthy people to sign up for coverage. The stick is the individual mandate and the penalty for going uninsured; the carrot is a system of subsidies to help people afford their premiums. Under Republicans' watch, the stick is getting a lot weaker while the carrot is looking more and more delicious.

What's happening: We're ending up in a place where the poorest consumers can get even cheaper coverage than the ACA intended, especially if they choose less comprehensive care, while wealthier consumers increasingly don't have much incentive to get covered at all. Those trends will only grow more pronounced if Republicans successfully repeal the individual mandate in their tax bill, leaving the law with only its carrot, and no stick.

Getting rid of the ACA's individual mandate would cause premiums to spike across the country, but would have an outsized impact in a handful of largely rural, largely conservative states, including in Alaska, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Reality check: The effects here are no different from the effects of "skinny repeal" — the last-ditch repeal-and-replace effort that GOP senators insisted they would only vote for if they had assurances it would never become law.

President Trump's opioid commission delivered more than 50 specific ideas to help combat the epidemic, involving more than a dozen agencies. But no one's in charge of implementing that overall plan — which means no one's accountable for its progress.

Be smart: Policy-specific "czars" can be a bit of a gimmick. But some experts say there's a strong case for giving one person the authority to spearhead an opioid response that will need to be far-reaching and multifaceted to be successful.

Sen. Susan Collins has suggested she'd vote for a tax bill repealing the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate only if Congress also passes separate legislation to establishing a new reinsurance fund.

Why this matters: Collins may be the key to passing the Senate's tax reform bill. But it's hard to see the Republican-controlled Congress passing a reinsurance bill — and though experts say such a measure would help offset the effects of repealing the mandate, many say it wouldn't go far enough.

Medicaid pays for more emergency room visits than any other insurance program, according to recent data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The health insurance program for the poor covered about one-third of all ER visits in 2014 — roughly 44 million of them, up from 26.5 million in 2006.

The big picture: Medicaid has been paying for more ER visits over time largely because the Affordable Care Act expanded the program. People in low-paying jobs that don't offer health benefits also rely on Medicaid coverage.