President Trump couldn’t get Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act, so he signed an executive order to encourage cheaper, less regulated insurance options — a change that critics fear will remove patient protections and undermine insurance markets. In response, Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray have put forward a bipartisan bill designed to stabilize the ACA markets.
With the future of the ACA so fiercely contested, what impact will Trump’s executive order have on health insurance, and what action should Congress now take?
We asked five experts:
- James Capretta, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former associate director for health programs at the OMB: Alexander-Murray deal a flawed first attempt at bipartisanship
- John McDonough, professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and former Senate adviser on health reform: Obamacare is dead. Long live the Affordable Care Act.
- Jeanne Lambrew, senior fellow at the Century Foundation and deputy assistant to the president for health policy in the Obama White House: Health care fix today could be undone tomorrow
- Tevi Troy, CEO of the American Health Policy Institute and former deputy secretary of HHS: Expanding HRAs would bolster individual market
- Christopher Condeluci, principal at CC Law and Policy and former tax and benefits counsel to the Senate Finance Committee: Clearing the air on AHPs
HENRY KOTULA 