For the past six years, no law has served as a larger GOP whipping post than the Affordable Care Act, and the Republican sweep Tuesday of political Washington has imperiled the ACA’s expansive reach, putting at risk the insurance that more than 20 million Americans have gained.
During the final week of his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to repeal the 2010 health-care law so swiftly that he might summon Congress into a special session to accomplish the task. “We will do it, and we will do it very, very quickly. It is a catastrophe,” he said.
On Wednesday, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and other congressional Republicans voiced fresh determination to complete the deed. After dozens of fruitless repeal votes in the House, and a major rescission attempt this year that President Obama blocked, Ryan noted that “now we have President Trump coming, who is asking us to do this.”
According to lawmakers and health-policy analysts, the GOP majorities in both chambers are likely to employ Congress’s reconciliation process to reverse critical aspects of the statute that involve federal spending, such as the subsidies helping millions of working- and middle-class Americans afford health plans. But analysts said a political path is less clear to dismantling other parts of the law, such as its insurance marketplaces, or to instituting a set of conservative health-care approaches.
