The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has helped millions of women access health insurance coverage and important services such as maternity care, cancer screenings, and prescription drugs. However, attempts to sabotage the ACA have put women’s health and well-being on the line. In addition to full-scale attempts to repeal the ACA, congressional Republicans and the Trump administration have worked to weaken the ACA in many other ways, creating uncertainty in the health care marketplace and, as a result, uncertainty for individuals and families across the country who rely on comprehensive, affordable health insurance to stay healthy and protect themselves from high premiums or unexpected health care costs. Such sabotage actions include last year’s repeal of the individual mandate and administrative actions that have expanded the availability of “junk plans,” among other things.
Sabotage has real costs. The Center for American Progress estimates that ACA sabotage through just two actions—repeal of the individual mandate and increased availability of short-term plans—will result in an additional $970 in premiums for a typical 40-year-old purchasing health insurance through the marketplace, beyond what the person would have paid absent that sabotage. For a family of four, sabotage results in an additional $3,110 in premiums. While many individuals and families who receive federal financial help to purchase insurance through the marketplace will not have to pay the full amount of these unnecessary costs, middle-class individuals and families who do not receive financial help will be responsible for the added costs. In addition to these two sabotage actions, the administration has taken a number of other steps to damage the ACA, many of which directly affect access to health care and affordability of services for women.
This column focuses on the threat that ACA sabotage actions—such as expanded availability of junk plans and administration rules that could limit access to important services and roll back protections—pose to women’s health, highlighting the particular risk for women with pre-existing conditions.
View the September 13 article Theresa Chalhoub on the Center for American Progress here.