A full repeal of Obamacare is not likely to happen according to healthcare policy experts, despite a Donald Trump presidency and a Republican-led House and Senate.
"Everyone's really looking toward how the Trump administration will be filling in the gaps" of what's known about his healthcare policy preferences," Benjamin Isgur, leader of healthcare consulting firm PwC's Health Research Institute, told USA Today after Trump was picked as the president-elect early Wednesday morning. "If it's 'repealing and replacing,' how exactly would that be defined? What about the parts of the ACA that tend to be very popular?"
Trump during the election cycle campaigned on a promise to repeal Obamacare, calling it a total disaster and stating it had "led to higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality," according to the Palm Beach Post.
But getting rid of it is easier said than done. What will likely happen, according to experts, are changes to the Affordable Care Act including eliminating subsidies for plans, a free market to reduce drug prices and eliminating the mandate that everyone has to be insured. If grants or tax credits are eliminated, millions of people could be uninsured overnight, reports Time.
"Everyone knows it needs to be changed, but Democrats can't be seen as voting to abolish Obamacare and Republicans can't be seen by their voters as voting for something that makes it better," healthcare economist John Goodman told USA Today. "Both parties have a base, so they cannot do something that the base regards as treason."
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that repealing Obamacare was a "pretty high item on (the) agenda" of the new, calling it the "single worst piece of legislation" from the first two years of the Barack Obama administration.
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