The possible future of Your Health Idaho with Trump in office
The Affordable Care Act, or ACA, could be in trouble with a full Republican sweep in Washington, D.C. It’s no secret that the ACA has had a target on its back from the GOP for years. President-elect Donald Trump has said he will repeal the health-care law and House Speaker Paul Ryan has also said he wants to see this done. Here in Idaho, the ACA is known as “Your Health Idaho.”
“Is he going to move quickly to finding a replacement for ObamaCare — that was, of course, a pillar of his campaign promising to repeal and replace. And given the fact that the House of Representatives has already voted many times to repeal that, I think that’s going to happen quickly,” said political analyst Dave Adler.
Stephen Weeg, board chair for Your Health Idaho said, “It would take an act of Congress and the president to make any substantial changes to the Affordable Care Act — all of that is possible.”
There are 95,000 people covered by Your Health Idaho.
“The key question for Americans is, ‘What comes next? What will be the replacement for ObamaCare?’ Given the fact that some 20 million Americans have received health insurance for the very first time in their lives — so we can’t dump them,” Adler said.
Some 10 million people have Medicaid in 31 states, and 10 million more people have state and federal health insurance exchanges. They will all be at risk if Trump decides to slash the ACA.
“Any decision to terminate all of that would put up to 20 million people at risk without any kind of coverage. Which then triggers into more significant risk for local hospitals and physicians and other health-care providers, where the demand would still be there, but no funding to cover those folks,” Weeg said.
Your Health Idaho is currently in open enrollment for the 2017 year, but despite the possible threat, Weeg said, “Our first priority is open enrollment right now for the 2017 planned year and that’s where we’re focusing all of our attention and energy. We can’t change what Congress and the new president will do, and at this point, our focus is we still have a lot of Idahoans who need help with their health insurance — who need help with their health care.”
Your Health Idaho’s open enrollment ends January 31, 2017. The whole country will be watching to see what Washington, D.C. decides for the future of millions of people’s health care.
