ObamaCare has been slowly dismantled with Congress removing the unpopular parts of the law and leaving the popular ones.
The law’s mandate to have insurance has been already repealed by lawmakers while some controversial taxes like the Cadilac Tax on high-cost health plans have been delayed. The Cadillac Tax has been largely condemned both by unions and business groups connected to healthcare.
According to The Hill, other central provisions of the law, including the subsidies to help people buy coverage, the expansion of Medicaid and the protections for people with pre-existing conditions, remain in place. And those parts appear likely to stick around for the foreseeable future, given that the GOP repeal push is on hold indefinitely.
Although former staffers that were part of the team that wrote the Affordable Care Act (ACA) prefer for the removed policies to stay in place they are still optimistic that the law can function without the mandate and the taxes. Experts are saying that with the removal of the unpopular parts of the law they strengthened ObamaCare which makes it harder to remove.
“The ACA is like an overachieving child with parents who got divorced that’s still on track to go to a good college,” stated Bob Kocher, Obama White House health care staffer who helped write the ACA.
“No politician wants to take subsidies away, and it’s the subsidies that enable the insurance expansion,” Kocher added.
Even though Congress is pushing to repeal the law, enrollments in ObamaCare have gone down only slightly in 2018.
“I think a year ago no one would have predicted that the marketplaces would be as strong as they are today,” said Jeanne Lambrew, leading Obama healthcare consultant who worked on passing the law, despite the fact that she warned of future actions the Trump administration could take.
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