The repeal and replacement of ACA
The repeal and replacement of ACA have failed because there hasn’t been an agreed-upon policy that should be put in its place. Even with the support in the bill to repeal ACA back in 2016, it was vetoed by the president so that an alternative to ACA would be developed. The repeal for ACA was pushed by the fact that the government would be able to cut a large amount of government spending on the elderly. We try to evaluate the effects of vote views on legislators’ decision to support particular policies.
While the repeal hopes to cut the cost and save resources to spend elsewhere, the price of ACA repeal could be pretty high. It would mean an increase to the uninsured by about 81percent. Legislators, however, do not care much for the effects of the ACA repeal. Their decisions are focused on being reelected. They could, therefore, argue with the statistics that show ACA repeal or replacement would save the government about $927 billion had it been effected from 2017 to 2026 (Buettgens et al., 2016). The cost-benefit analysis, therefore, only hopes to gain votes for legislators through the amount ACA repeal wishes to save, but there is a higher cost involved. Eighty-one percent of people who will lose their insurance will be working people, young adults, and minorities. The repeal, therefore, results to lower quality healthcare to low-income families who cannot afford private insurance (Friedmann et al., 2017). Young adults and minorities will be profoundly affected by the repeal.
Considering that about 81 percent of people who are currently insured will be left uninsured, there will be less popularity for legislators supporting the repeal and hoping to be reelected. With such a high number of the currently insured people at risk of losing health coverage, it would mean that this number of voters would be against the idea for repeal. Health is the one concept that people, no matter their political affiliation, will not compromise on (Collins et al., 2017). Having established the vote views in this situation, the legislators will have to think again about the national policies they support and propose. Legislators will focus on creating and developing policies that will better replace ACA or be equally as helpful to their voters. It will prevent the voters from not reelecting them on the basis that they support policies that are against the voters well being.
In conclusion, legislators’ choice to propose or support specific policies is based on the votes they need to get reelected. They will evaluate the vote views and decided what the majority feels about proposed policies and change their approaches based on it. If the proposed policies have more losses but do not affect the votes, they will still go ahead to support them.
Friedmann, P. D., Andrews, C. M., & Humphreys, K. (2017). How ACA repeal would worsen the opioid epidemic. New England Journal of Medicine, 376(10), e16.
Collins, S. R., Gunja, M. Z., & Doty, M. M. (2017). Following the ACA repeal-and-replace effort, where does the US stand on insurance coverage?. The Commonwealth Fund.
Buettgens, M., Blumberg, L. J., Holahan, J., & Ndwandwe, S. (2016). The Cost of the ACA Repeal. Urban Institute.