Why GOP’s Obamacare Repeal Path Worries Health Care Industry

President-elect Donald Trump's promise to repeal "Obamacare" seems within reach and distressingly likely. But, as has been the case for the length and breadth of the Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act, the simple political mantra of "repeal and replace" is being undermined by the fact that the GOP still doesn't have any particular notion of how to do those things.

The law has been in effect for a few years now, and millions of people are benefiting from it. Getting rid of Obamacare necessarily means injecting an enormous amount of uncertainty and risk into people's lives and reopening anxieties over whether they'll have health coverage in the future.

Meanwhile, worried House and Senate Republicans are getting an earful from almost every corner of the American health care industry. Republicans have received dire warnings from health insurers about the death spiral their individual market will experience if no Obamacare replacement is immediately forthcoming.

Representing patients, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network reminded lawmakers that lives are at stake. Hospitals say a stand-alone repeal would cost them billions, compromising their ability to serve local communities. Actuaries worry that the mere promise of an eventual replacement won't be enough to sustain the individual health insurance market as cited on Daily Herald.

The concerns went beyond the obvious potential hardship for 20 million people covered by subsidized private insurance and expanded Medicaid under President Barack Obama's signature law, and the anti-cancer network is bothered that protection for people with pre-existing health conditions might be undermined or lost.

Recent research suggests that the Republican repeal of President Obama's landmark health care law will result in tens of thousands of Americans needlessly dying every year according to ABC News. That grotesque outcome would be the perverse result of the path Republicans in Congress are now plotting to pursue in their "repeal and delay" approach to Obamacare. The health insurance industry, the hospital industry, and the AMA are all raising red flags.

GOP's scorched-earth campaign destined to lay waste to American health care has led Brian Beutler to counsel Republicans that "the alternative to Obamacare is Obamacare.