[This commentary was published on the Commonwealth Magazine website last week. If you are supportive of what the Affordable Care Act has achieved and want to help defend it — the time is NOW. Please go to: http://protectmycare.org/ to learn how you can help, now. Everyone. Please.]
A NEW REPUBLICAN-CONTROLLED Congress is in place. And for the sixth time, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is facing extinction. Indeed, a gripping narrative history of the ACA/Obamacare could be written focused only on its numerous near-death experiences. Maybe the sixth time will be the curse, and maybe not. Let’s recall.
One, in January 2010, the loss of the 60th Democratic vote in the US Senate via the election of Republican Scott Brown to the seat formerly held by Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy was almost universally assumed to be the end of the road for President Obama’s health reform agenda. He signed the ACA into law two months later.
Two, in June 2012, by a single vote, the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the ACA’s individual mandate and, by extension, the ACA. On the day of the decision, premature news accounts by CNN and Fox News erroneously reported that the court had overturned the law.
Three, in November 2012, thorough ACA repeal would have followed an electoral win by Republican Mitt Romney in that year’s presidential election, well before full implementation in 2014.
Four, between October-December 2013, catastrophic launches of the federal and state Health Exchange websites temporarily made the law a national laughingstock facing stillbirth at its most critical setup moment. The debacle was accompanied by a three-week October shutdown of the federal government in a final Republican spasm to prevent January 1, 2014, implementation.
Five, in June 2015, a second potentially fatal lawsuit that reached the US Supreme Court was laid aside by a 6-3 vote.
Six and lastly, the November 2016 federal elections represented the final life-threatening challenge. An expected presidential victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton would have sealed the law’s lifespan at least until 2021. Instead, Republican Donald Trump’s victory now is leading many, once again, to predict the law’s effective demise this year.
Except, it ain’t necessarily so. Here are three reasons why.
First, the Republicans’ ACA playbook is riddled with contradictions and dissent over their “repeal and delay” strategy. Will delay last two, three, or four years? Once they repeal the law’s financing, how can they pay for even a minimal replacement? Will they do one replacement or a series of replacement bills? How can they keep private insurance companies from abandoning the individual insurance market in soon-to-be demolished health exchanges? How will they keep preposterous promises that their still-unknown replacement will provide better coverage at lower cost for everyone who has been helped by the ACA? How will they keep Republican governors in line as they seek to slash Medicaid spending by approximately $1 trillion dollars over 10 years? These are just for starters.
For a devastating look at the contradictions in “repeal and delay,” see this week’s Health Affairs blog by conservative analysts Joseph Antos and James Capretta: “The Problems with ‘Repeal and Delay.’” “The most likely end result of ‘repeal and delay,’” they write, “would be less secure insurance for many Americans, procrastination by political leaders who will delay taking any proactive steps as long as possible, and ultimately no discernible movement toward a real marketplace for either insurance or medical services.”
Second, as Americans now focus on Republican non-plans and non-answers, public opinion is turning against them. Recent Kaiser Family Foundation polling shows that even Trump voters – who are far more chronically ill and needy than Clinton backers – support nearly all of the ACA’s essential building blocks except for the individual mandate, and oppose repeal without a replacement plan. As Noam Levey from the Los Angeles Times has shown, not a single nationally recognized patient or health care provider organization supports the Republican repeal agenda. Only the fringes of the Tea Party stand by their sides in this backward quest.
Third, while defenders of Republican drive to end coverage for between 22 to 30 million Americans are few and far between, broad resistance to the first major policy thrust of the Trump era is building. A broad-based “Protect Your Care” coalition is spearheading national resistance, collaborating with President Obama and congressional Democrats and leading to a day of demonstrations across the nation on January 15. Hospitals, doctor and medical student groups, insurance companies, community health centers, and other health care stakeholders are making clear the damage now threatening the entire US health care system. Meanwhile, former Democratic congressional staffers have developed a blueprint for broad-based resistance to the Trump/Republican agenda, called “Indivisible.”
Republicans may win, though they will rue the day that they set in motion destabilization of the nation’s health care system. Around the globe, universal health coverage is now recognized not just as something governments do to be nice to their people, it is understood as an essential precondition for healthy societies and healthy economies. Over the past eight years, the United States has been moving forward to join the universal consensus of advanced nations, most of whom are far less affluent than the US.
Whether Republicans succeed or fail is not just up to them. It is now up to all Americans. Vive la ACA resistance!
Health Stew 