Bills
| 3.23.22

Should Congress Repeal The Affordable Care Act And Start Working On A Replacement? (H.R. 596)

Do you support or oppose this bill?

What is H.R. 596?

(Updated November 5, 2019)

This bill would repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or ACA), and all healthcare related provisions of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (HCERA). Laws that had been repealed by the enactment of the PPACA and HCERA would be restored as if they hadn’t been eliminated in the first place.

Congressional committees — including Education and the Workforce, Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and the Committee on the Judiciary — would be directed to think of replacement healthcare proposals to present to the House of Representatives that satisfy the following guidelines:

  •  Lower healthcare premiums through increased competition and choice;
  •  Preservation of a patient’s ability to keep his or her health plan if they want to;
  •  Offer people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health coverage;
  •  Reform the medical liability system to reduce unnecessary and wasteful spending;
  •  Increase the number of insured people in the U.S., and protect the doctor-patient relationship;
  •  Offer states greater flexibility to administer Medicaid programs;
  •  Expand incentives for personal responsibility for health care coverage and costs.

Additional guidelines that committees should consider when dreaming up replacement legislation would include:

  • Foster economic growth and private sector job creation;
  • Prohibit taxpayer funding for abortions and provide conscience protections for healthcare providers;
  • Eliminate redundant government programs and wasteful spending;
  • Not accelerating the insolvency of entitlement programs or increasing the tax burden on Americans;

Argument in favor

Repealing and replacing the ACA will force the government to find a healthcare system that actually serves the people by offering better service for less money.

Argument opposed

The ACA has helped countless people access healthcare that would have been impossible before. Besides, why should the current system be repealed when there isn’t a clear replacement ready?

Impact

People in the U.S. who have or will have medical needs, those who receive Medicare benefits, people buying or offering health insurance through their businesses, healthcare providers, state government agencies administering Medicaid, congressional committees.

Cost of H.R. 596

A current CBO cost estimate for this bill is unavailable. However, in 2012 the CBO estimated that repealing the ACA would lead to $1.2 trillion in savings over the following 10 years, and costs of $1.3 trillion over the same 10 years. This comes to a projected net cost of approximately $109 billion over that period, which breaks down to more than $10 billion annually.

Additional Info

Of Note:

As the Affordable Care Act (ACA) progresses in its implementation, it still lacks the widespread support that President Obama would have hoped his signature law would achieve. According to the RealClearPolitics average of the law’s approval - only 39.7 percent of Americans support the law, while 51.3 percent oppose it.

The ACA’s turbulent roll-out has not bolstered public confidence in the law. The administration estimated that as many as 93 million Americans who had been covered by health insurance policies that did not conform to the ACA’s coverage requirements would face the cancellation of their plans. The employer mandate to provide health insurance to employees was postponed, then postponed again. The federal health insurance exchange’s website — Healthcare.gov — experienced problems at its launch. Some of the state exchanges fared no better, as Oregon was forced to scrap its website, and Maryland had to completely rebuild theirs.

Challenges to the ACA have arisen both in Congress and in the U.S. Supreme Court. In Congress, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has announced that three of the leading Republican committee chairs will begin drafting an alternative to the ACA. The Supreme Court will begin hearings in early March on a case known as  — a suit that questions whether the federal government can provide subsidies to states that declined to set up their own health insurance exchanges. A ruling on the case is expected by June or July of 2015, and is considered to the most severe legal challenge to the ACA yet.

So far the ACA has been a mixed bag for consumers in terms of their health insurance premiums. According to HealthPocket, unsubsidized 30 year old women faced an average premium increase from 2013 to 2014 of $76 per month, while their male counterparts faced an increase of $124 per month. In 2015, 30 year olds will see bronze plan premiums decrease by an average of $30 per month, while silver and gold plans will be essentially unchanged.

There also have been many success stories about Americans who couldn’t get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions, or would have had to pay substantial monthly premiums for their coverage. Others have been able to save money on their medications, or be able to undergo surgery that wouldn’t have been practical before the ACA came into effect.


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(Photo Credit: Flickr user ✖ Daniel Rehn)