GOP Stumbles Over How to Replace Affordable Care Act

The U.S. Capitol. Photo: Morguefile

The GOP has made it very clear that they want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. They haven’t, however, made it clear what, if anything, will replace it.

President Donald Trump has said he supports simultaneous repeal and replacement. Congressional leaders said they would quickly repeal the statute—and the House and Senate have both voted to repeal the vast majority of protections offered by the Affordable Care Act. They have said the repeal will come with a delayed effective date so they have more time to work on a replacement.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis) told reporters recently that although they don’t have an alternative to show voters yet, they plan to repeal the ACA and replace it with their plan at the same time. “It is our goal to bring it all together concurrently,” he said.

The problem is that federal budget only gives congressional committees until Jan. 27 to put together the legislation to repeal much of the ACA, and Republicans have long been divided over how to replace it. The process of creating a statute they can all agree upon could take months or longer.

Reps. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Susan Collins of Maine, both Republicans, introduced a budget amendment that would postpone the target date until March 3. Corker told ABC News that this would provide “additional time to get the policy right.”

Since the Republicans have been fighting the ACA since 2010, it’s hard to believe that they haven’t come up with any replacement legislation. They’ve had six years to figure it out, and now they want to come up with something by March.

It does seem as if they never thought that far ahead, possibly because until very recently, it didn’t seem like they would have much of a shot at taking it apart. But Trump made it a part of his election campaign, despite the fact that dismantling the act will actually harm a number of his supporters. Some of those supporters have already expressed concern that he would take away their insurance, which Trump promised to do while he was on the campaign trail.

 Whatever the GOP tries to do with the Affordable Care Act, the Congressional Democrats, and millions of American citizens, are not going to make dismantling it easy.