After six years of trying to repeal and erode the law, President Trump finally has the opportunity. He has also been given the chance to make things worse.
That’s why a number of healthcare experts are worried that the president will attempt to undermine the law by taking away key protections and incentives for people to purchase health insurance. This could cause significant harm to the poor, sick and older Americans who rely on Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces.
Costs
Obamacare costs depend on your age, income, family size and the type of health insurance plan you choose. Costs are lower if you qualify for premium tax credits, which reduce costs by an average of $508 a month for many Americans.
A family of four earning 149% of the federal poverty level ($35,000) pays less than 2.06% of their income for a Silver plan. They receive savings on their monthly premiums via tax credits and have 95% actuarial value due to out-of-pocket cost assistance.
The cost of healthcare is one of the largest areas of government spending in our country. The Affordable Care Act helps reduce the growth in healthcare costs by tens of billions each year.
Coverage
Obamacare provides critical coverage to millions of Americans, and helps reduce the cost of health care. It offers many important consumer protections, such as making it illegal for insurance companies to charge people with pre-existing conditions more than others or to deny them coverage altogether.
The ACA also allows individuals to buy a health plan that can be tailored to their individual needs and to use tax credits to help pay for it. The ACA’s marketplaces are designed to provide affordable health insurance that covers all aspects of health care, including preventive services and prescription drugs.
But the ACA is under threat, and the president’s administration has taken a variety of actions to undermine it. In January 2018, for example, the Administration encouraged states to implement work requirements for Medicaid recipients, which studies show have increased uninsured rates and weakened access to care.
Pre-existing conditions
Before the Affordable Care Act was passed, it was legal for insurance companies to deny you coverage if you had certain medical conditions. They could even charge you more or exclude your treatment completely.
The law aimed to protect people with pre-existing conditions by requiring insurance companies to cover them, including high blood pressure, pregnancy, allergies and cancer. It also set up a system of federal tax credits that helped make it easier for people to buy insurance.
But it is possible that the pre-existing condition protections would be wiped out if the ACA were to be struck down in court. And experts say that could be a major setback for the law, which has helped millions of Americans get health coverage.
Enrollment
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) created a health insurance marketplace for people to purchase individual and family plans. The law also made other changes to the American health care system, including protections for people with pre-existing conditions and a move toward value-based healthcare payment models.
Despite its shortcomings, the ACA has achieved significant gains in the number of people with coverage. Those gains are likely to continue as long as Congress continues to take steps to consolidate the ACA’s successes and stabilize insurance markets.
In addition, a recent study found that the enrollment trends in state-based marketplaces (SBMs) have been more stable than those in states using the federal government’s marketplace platform (FFM). The difference in enrollment between SBMs and FFM states may represent a window into how much higher 2020 enrollment would have been without the Trump administration’s attacks on the ACA from 2017 to 2020.
In the meantime, Congress has the chance to pass legislation that will preserve the ACA’s popular provisions and protect more than 20 million Americans.
