When President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, they probably weren’t aware they placed a booby trap in the law.
President Donald Trump has now found the trap, and he’s about to set it off — which could undermine the law and possibly hurt some of the Americans the ACA is supposed to help.
The most controversial part of the ACA was Obama’s claim that “if you like the plan you have, you can keep it. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold.” He was wrong about that. One provision of the ACA required all insurers to offer “essential health benefits,” such as maternity and pediatric care and mental health services. That was meant to eliminate limited-benefit plans — sometimes derided as “junk” plans — that didn’t provide all the services some patients needed.
But those types of plans happened to be popular among people who didn’t get coverage through an employer and bought insurance on their own, a group that numbered at least a few million Americans. They preferred limited-benefit plans because they only had to pay for coverage they needed. When the ACA went into effect, limited-benefit plans disappeared, and most people who had been purchasing them had to pay considerably more for plans that offered more coverage than they wanted. It was like being forced to buy a Cadillac when you only wanted a Chevy.
