Republicans Continue Effort to Repeal the Affordable Care Act Without Offering a Real Plan to Replace It

On Friday, President Trump issued his first executive order, a vague yet potentially broad attack on the Affordable Care Act that has created uncertainty over what the impact of it will be:

• Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME): “I think that the executive order is very confusing, we really don't know yet what the impact will be.” [1/23/17]
• Larry Levitt, Kaiser Family Foundation: “Potentially the biggest step implied by this order would be granting wide-scale hardship exemptions from the individual mandate, which could create significant uncertainty for insurers and chaos in the individual insurance market.” [Huffington Post, 1/20/17]

While the new Administration and Republican leaders continue their effort to repeal the ACA, they have yet to offer a real plan to replace the law. Instead, Republicans have floated repealing and replacing only certain provisions of the law, which creates significant uncertainty and would lead to collapse of the system:

“Ex­perts say break­ing a [ACA] re­place­ment in­to smal­ler pieces could set up some of those pieces for fail­ure—and they could take the whole en­ter­prise down with them… Be­cause Re­pub­lic­ans don’t know what the spe­cif­ic ele­ments of their policy pro­pos­al will be, they don’t know how polit­ic­ally con­tro­ver­sial those ele­ments will be. But if cer­tain pieces of a piece­meal strategy fail, the rest might not work and in­sur­ance mar­kets could des­cend in­to a ‘death spir­al.’” [National Journal, 1/23/17]

Meanwhile, the consequences of repealing the Affordable Care Act without immediately replacing it are clear:

• Repealing the ACA without a replacement plan in place would kick 18 million Americans off their health coverage in the first year, and 32 million Americans would be without health coverage by 2026. [CBO]
• Americans with employer-based insurance would see their premiums increase at least 20 percentin the first year of repeal.
  • Premiums would double in 10 years if the Medicare expansion and marketplace subsidies are eliminated. [CBO]
• Republican efforts to repeal the ACA and delay implementation of a replacement plan could increase premiums for young adults on average $725 in 2018. [The Century Foundation, 1/24/17]

Across the country, Americans are calling on Congressional Republicans to not repeal the Affordable Care Act without immediately replacing it:

Cedar Rapids, Iowa: “Sara Kissling owns The Sausage Foundry in Cedar Rapids with her husband. She has stage five kidney failure. The Affordable Care Act lets her get coverage with her pre-existing condition. It also helps her afford dialysis treatment and medical equipment…‘Without it I would have met my cap within maybe six months. I'd be dead right now anyway, because who can afford $30,000 per month in expenses.’” [KCRG, 1/15/17]

Morristown, New Jersey: “More than 40 people gathered at the Morristown office of U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) on Friday to express their concerns with the proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act and to urge the congressman to hold a town hall meeting on the matter. Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, who is partially blind and partially deaf, told a spokesperson from Frelinghuysen's office she's worried the repeal of ACA would stop her from being able to lead a regular life. ‘I have been disabled since birth,’ Sjunneson-Henry said. ‘I have literally had a pre-existing condition since before I was born...If the ACA is repealed, I'm very afraid that with the pre-existing conditions I have I could lose my insurance.’” [NJ.com, 1/20/17]

Solon Springs, Wisconsin: “Susan Flemmen, a retired teacher from Lake Nebagamon, challenged [Rep. Sean] Duffy (R-WI) for his vote last Friday to repeal the Affordable Care Act, noting that nine other Republicans voted against repeal...‘What was their plan — your plan — to replace it?’ she asked. ‘Why weren't Republicans working on replace, not just repeal?’” [Hudson Star-Observer, 1/22/17]

While Republicans work to take away health care from millions of Americans, Democrats will continue to hold the Trump Administration and Congressional leaders accountable and fight to protect quality and affordable health coverage for millions of American families.

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