On October 23, 2015, the House passed a reconciliation bill containing provisions submitted by three committees—Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and the Workforce—pursuant to reconciliation instructions included in the FY2016 budget resolution ( S.Con.Res. 11 ). The bill, the Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015 ( H.R. 3762 ), would repeal several provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA; P.L. 111-148 , as amended). It would also restrict federal funding for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its affiliates and clinics for a period of one year. This report provides background on the reconciliation process and summarizes the provisions in H.R. 3762 , including their projected budgetary impact. It then briefly examines the bill's policy implications. The report will be updated as necessary to reflect key legislative developments. Budget reconciliation is an optional, expedited legislative process that consists of several stages, beginning with the adoption of the budget resolution. As provided in Section 310 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 ( P.L. 93-344 , as amended; referred to below as the Budget Act), the purpose of the reconciliation process is to allow Congress to use an expedited procedure when considering legislation that would bring existing spending, revenue, and debt-limit laws into compliance with current fiscal priorities established in the annual budget resolution. In adopting a budget resolution, Congress is agreeing upon budgetary goals for the upcoming fiscal year (as well as for a period of at least four additional out-years). In some cases, to achieve these goals, Congress must enact legislation that alters current revenue, direct spending, or debt-limit laws. In these situations, Congress seeks to reconcile existing law with current priorities. Since the first use of the reconciliation process in 1980, this expedited procedure has been used to pass 23 reconciliation bills. If Congress intends to use the reconciliation process, reconciliation directives (also referred to as reconciliation instructions) must be included in the annual budget resolution. These directives trigger the second stage of the process by instructing individual committees to develop and report legislation that would change laws within their respective jurisdictions related to direct spending, revenue, or the debt limit. When a committee is instructed to submit legislation reducing the deficit by a specific amount, that amount is considered a minimum, meaning a committee may report greater net savings. Although there is no procedural mechanism to ensure that legislation submitted by a committee in response to reconciliation instructions will be in compliance with the instructed levels, if a committee does not report legislation—or if such legislation is not in compliance with the reconciliation instructions—procedures are available that would allow either chamber to move forward with reconciliation legislation. In either situation, legislative language that falls within the noncompliant committee's jurisdiction can be added to a reconciliation bill during floor consideration that would bring the bill into compliance with its reconciliation instructions. These methods vary by chamber. In developing legislation in response to reconciliation instructions, the policy choices made remain the prerogative of the committee. In some instances, reconciliation directives have been couched in terms of particular options or assumptions regarding how an instructed committee might be expected to achieve its reconciliation target, but such language has not been considered binding on committees and would not be enforceable through points of order. Once a specified committee develops legislation, the reconciliation directive may further direct the committee to report the legislation for consideration in the respective chamber or to submit the legislation to the Budget Committee to be included in an omnibus reconciliation measure. Under Section 310(b)(2) of the Budget Act, the Budget Committee is required to mark up and report such omnibus legislation "without any substantive revision." Reported reconciliation legislation is eligible to be considered under expedited procedures in both the House and the Senate. As with all legislation, any differences in the reconciliation legislation passed by the two chambers must be resolved before the bill can be sent to the President for approval or veto. Although reconciliation instructions may include target dates, there is no requirement that the Budget Committee—in either chamber—wait for all committees to submit legislative language. Nor is there a requirement for the Budget Committee to report an omnibus reconciliation bill on a specific date. The late response of one or more committees would not cause the bill to lose its privileged status as a reconciliation bill. In the case of omnibus reconciliation measures, the House and Senate Budget Committees have at times delayed reporting a bill. As a consequence, the target date included in reconciliation instructions is not necessarily indicative of a timetable for consideration of reconciliation legislation. S.Con.Res. 11 established the congressional budget for the federal government for FY2016 and set forth budgetary levels for FY2017-FY2025. It also included reconciliation instructions for House and Senate committees to submit changes in laws to reduce the federal deficit to their respective budget committees. Section 2001(a) of S.Con.Res. 11 instructed two committees of the Senate—the Committee on Finance and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions—to submit changes in laws within each committee's jurisdiction to reduce the deficit by not less than $1 billion for the period FY2016-FY2025. Section 2002(a) instructed three committees of the House—the Committees on Education and the Workforce, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means—to submit changes in laws within each committee's jurisdiction to reduce the deficit by not less than $1 billion for the period FY2016-FY2025. Section 2002(b)(2) further provided that these committees shall "note the policies discussed in title VI [of S.Con.Res. 11 ] that repeal the Affordable Care Act and the health care related provisions of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010" and "determine the most effective methods" by which they "shall be repealed in their entirety." On October 9, 2015, the House Budget Committee held a markup and voted to report a reconciliation bill, the Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, combining the submissions of the three committees ( H.R. 3762 , H.Rept. 114-293 ). The House Rules Committee subsequently reported a resolution on October 21, setting the terms for consideration of H.R. 3762 ( H.Res. 483 , H.Rept. 114-303 ). In addition to allowing two hours of general debate on the bill, the resolution provided that the vote to approve the terms for consideration of the bill would also amend the language in the bill concerning grants to Planned Parenthood, and striking the language concerning the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). H.Res. 483 was approved by the House, 240-187, on October 22, and H.R. 3762 , as amended, was considered and passed the following day, 240-189. As of the date of this report, the Senate has not taken any public action related to the reconciliation instructions in S.Con.Res. 11 . Table 1 summarizes the ACA provisions that would be repealed by H.R. 3762 , the House reconciliation bill. The table also shows the impact that repealing these ACA provisions would have on the federal deficit, excluding any macroeconomic effects, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). According to CBO and JCT, the House reconciliation bill would reduce federal deficits by $78.1 billion over the 2016-2025 period, excluding any macroeconomic effects. Some of the policy implications of repealing these provisions are discussed in the final section of this report. (See " Policy Implications of Repeal .") In addition to repealing certain ACA provisions, H.R. 3762 would prohibit federal funds from being made available to a state, whether directly or through a contracted managed-care organization, for a period of one year following enactment to any entity (including its affiliates, subsidiaries, and clinics) that meets the following criteria: First, the entity is a nonprofit community provider primarily engaged in providing family planning and reproductive health services and related medical care. Second, the entity provides abortions other than in circumstances where the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest or where the pregnancy places the woman's life in danger. Third, the entity's Medicaid expenditures for FY2014 exceeded $350 million. Based on these criteria, CBO inferred that only PPFA and its affiliates and clinics would be affected (although CBO did not rule out the possibility that other health care clinics might also be impacted). CBO estimated that $235 million could be saved—mainly from the Medicaid program—as a result of this one-year funding restriction. Finally, H.R. 3762 would appropriate an additional $235 million for each of FY2016 and FY2017 to the federal health centers program. This section provides a brief overview of the potential policy implications associated with each of the ACA repeal provisions in H.R. 3762 . While the bill would repeal a number of ACA provisions, it would not repeal the entirety of the ACA. If the bill were to be enacted as is, many ACA provisions would remain intact, such as the health insurance exchanges and the availability of financial assistance through the exchanges. This section is not intended to provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of repealing the ACA provisions included in the bill, but it does provide an overview of potential policy implications, including those that may occur because some ACA provisions would remain in place. For additional information, please contact one of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysts identified in the key policy staff table at the end of the report. H.R. 3762 would repeal the ACA's individual mandate and its associated penalty, effective January 1, 2015. As shown in Table 1 , CBO and JCT estimate a net savings from repealing both the individual and employer mandates.