Obamacare, the government shutdown, and a 2017 FHC forum that “solved all the problems”

Then-Brookings scholars Stuart Butler (left) and Alice Rivlin (right) spoke about the health care debate during the April 27th, 2017 discussion moderated by Julia Baller of Mathematica.

In 2017, Forest Hills Connection cohosted a forum on health care costs featuring two Forest Hills neighbors with a lot of experience in policy – so much so that one of the panelists was an architect of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

“We solved all the problems,” Stuart Butler quipped at the end. If only that were true.

The ACA is central to the current budget impasse in Congress, and in an October 1st Washington Post op-ed, Avik Roy of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity wrote about the law’s problems and potential fixes – the same ones Butler and Alice Rivlin discussed at the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law in April 2017.

At the time, Republicans in Congress were bent on repealing Obamacare, though many of its provisions were and remain popular. Health insurers could no longer exclude people with preexisting conditions, Medicaid expanded to provide coverage to more people, and parents could keep their children on their health plans until the kids turned 26.

But problems remain. One example raised by Roy and the 2017 forum: the problem of healthy young people dropping out or opting out of the ACA marketplace because of high premiums. This population is needed to make the insurance pool work.