ATLANTA—Despite Republicans gaining control of both the House and Senate, two healthcare experts predict Congress will not repeal the Affordable Care Act.
What Republicans will do, analysts project, is make marginal adjustments to the ACA.
“They won’t be able to repeal Obamacare, but I believe the Republicans will focus on particular provisions of the Affordable Care Act and modify them to make more business sense,” said Annette Bechtold, SVP of regulatory affairs and reform initiatives for health benefits advisory firm Digital Insurance.
Although many Republicans ran on a platform of defunding Obamacare, Bechtold said she believes those Republicans will not be able to deliver as they still lack the two-thirds majority necessary to override a presidential veto.
Even if Republicans are successful the 2016 presidential election, Bechtold predicted the party still will not repeal the new healthcare law, because it will be difficult to take healthcare coverage away from individuals. She said carriers, providers, and consumers will become even more deeply engrained into the new healthcare system by that point. “To take the current system away will be hard, especially since Republicans have yet to provide another solution.”
Jeff Chesky, Insuritas
Tinkering At ACA Margins
Bechtold gave an example of the kinds of changes Republicans could achieve. “What we might see is adjusting the number of hours employees have to work to receive healthcare coverage from their employer.”
Bechtold said that under the ACA, large employers mandated to provide coverage must do so for individuals working at least 30 hours a week.
“I could see Republicans changing that to 40 hours, which would reduce the number of staff employers have to cover,” she said.
Jeff Chesky, CEO at East Windsor, Conn.-based Insuritas, too, sees Republicans doing little more than “tinkering at the margins” of the ACA.
“How do you tell millions of Americans who for the first time in a generation have fundamental basic healthcare coverage that it will be taken away? Will you tell the emergency rooms across the U.S. to get ready for the lines that will queue up for people to get medical care the hospital will never get paid for? I don’t think so.”