SAINT PAUL – The Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed into law in 2010, has helped thousands of Minnesotans gain access to the health care they need. Since his election, President Trump and his allies have worked to overturn the ACA, and filed a federal lawsuit that has put the law’s future in jeopardy. On Thursday, the Minnesota House Health and Human Services Finance Division discussed the impacts Minnesotans could face should the federal law be overturned.
“For decades, Minnesota has been a leader in ensuring people have access to the health care they need. But as a result of the Trump administration and their allies’ continued attacks on the ACA, many Minnesotans – especially those with low-incomes or preexisting conditions – are in jeopardy of losing the coverage they depend on,” said Rep. Tina Liebling (DFL – Rochester), who chairs the committee. “We have a responsibility to protect the progress we’ve made to ensure access to coverage for Minnesotans. Instead of going backwards, as Republicans would prefer, we should continue working to reduce prices, increase access, and deliver better health care outcomes.”
After Republicans in the U.S. Congress tried and failed to repeal the ACA, Trump allies filed a federal lawsuit, Texas v. Azar, seeking to overturn the ACA. If the effort is successful and the law is struck down, there could be far-reaching consequences across the nation’s entire health care system, including impacts on Minnesotans.
Minnesota could lose as much as $2.8 billion in federal funding, including funding for MinnesotaCare and Medicaid expansion, premium tax credits for those who purchase coverage on the individual market, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and more. In 2018, approximately 210,000 low-income Minnesotans were covered under the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid (Medical Assistance).
Since enactment of the ACA, Minnesota has made great progress in reducing its uninsured rate, but President Trump and his allies’ efforts to gut or eliminate the law have reversed this trend. While Trump, Republican lawmakers, and their echo chamber have claimed that they will protect people with pre-existing conditions, they have offered no meaningful plan to do so, nor any plan to allow young people to remain on their parents’ coverage until age 26.
Other protections could also disappear, including essential health benefits like coverage for contraception, mental health, substance use disorder and maternity and newborn care, and the requirement that insurance companies spend a high portion of premiums on actual medical care.
House DFLers are committed to protecting key components of the ACA at the state level, including coverage for preexisting conditions, out-of-pocket maximums, and no-cost preventative care services. They are also working to pass long-overdue legislation to provide emergency insulin and reduce the cost of prescription drugs.