| 3.23.22

Repealing the Affordable Care Act (H.R. 370)

Do you support or oppose this bill?

What is H.R. 370?

(Updated May 25, 2021)

This bill would repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), in addition to the health-care related provisions of the Health Care & Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA) of 2010.

If enacted, H.R. 45 would restore all laws that were amended by the passage of the ACA & HCERA.

While there is dispute over whether the House has voted 54 times or only six times to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there is no question about the purpose and extent of this bill. If passed, H.R. 370 would completely repeal the ACA and restore health-care related laws that were changed after it’s passage.

Argument in favor

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is still widely unpopular, and many have seen their health insurance plans canceled & premiums rise since it took effect.

Argument opposed

This bill will never be signed into law by President Obama. Even if it were, repealing the ACA would be costly and people could lose their health insurance.

Impact

Anyone with health insurance through the ACA, health-care providers, insurance companies, government agencies related to healthcare, Congress.

Cost of H.R. 370

A CBO cost estimate of the 113th version of this bill found that the net savings from repealing the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA would be more than $1.2 trillion between 2014-2023. It also estimated that the cost of repealing the rest of the ACA would be more than $1.3 trillion in that time frame. The net magnitude of these changes are difficult to quantify, but are projected cost about $100 billion between 2014-2023.

Additional Info

Of Note:

President Obama’s signature law has never achieved the level of popular support that he would have hoped. According to the RealClearPolitics average of the law’s approval, only 38.7 percent of Americans currently support the law, while 51.1 percent oppose it.

The ACA bumpy roll out hasn’t helped either. The administration estimated that as many as 93 million Americans who were covered by old health insurance policies that did not conform to the ACA’s coverage requirements would face the cancellation for their plans. The employer mandate to provide health insurance to employees has been postponed, and then postponed again. The federal health insurance exchange website — Healthcare.gov — experienced major problems at its launch. Some of the state exchanges have not fared better, as Oregon was forced to scrap its website, while Maryland had to completely rebuild theirs.

The ACA’s defenders point out that not everything has gone poorly and that there are many success stories out there. The reported:

"Judith Silverstein, 49, a Californian who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2007. Her family helps her pay the $750 monthly cost of her existing plan--which she only had because of federal law requiring that insurers who provide employer-based insurance continue to offer coverage if the employer goes out of business, as hers did. Next year she'll get a subsidy that will get her a good "silver" level plan for $50.
For Silverstein that coverage is indispensable. Her case is relatively mild, but MS is a progressive condition that typically has made its sufferers pariahs of the individual insurance market in the past. "I researched the options," she says. "Nobody's going to sell you insurance in the individual market if you have MS." But these customers can't be excluded or saddled with big premium markups any more."