Despite hitting record coverage numbers, Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages warns Obamacare is 'under attack.'

Despite repeated partisan legal challenges aimed at its demise, the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, has not only survived, but become an indispensable part of the American health care system. This year, a record number of Americans — an estimated 21 million — are insured through its marketplaces, which have redefined baseline expectations for consumer coverage in the health care system. Yet despite its 14 years of proven durability, Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, a Democrat, remains warily concerned about ACA’s future.

Solages was blunt in her assessment of what, or rather who represents the biggest political risk to undoing the health care law — former President Donald Trump.

At a news conference in Valley Stream last week, Solages, and leaders of the 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East labor union and Protect Our Care, a nonprofit health care advocacy group, forcefully articulated their concerns, underscoring how the law has served as a crucial safety net for New Yorkers, and warned that its termination could be disastrous.

“As we interface with the affordability crisis, it’s important to acknowledge there are reforms at work, from the Affordable Care Act to the Inflation Reduction Act, to ensure that people have access to health care,” Solages said. “Now we are seeing constant attacks on these reforms, whether it’s federal representatives trying to take away provisions that ensure people with pre-existing conditions have access to health care or cull prescription pricing relief.”

Trump seeks to take on ACA...again.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, sought to roll back or repeal significant elements of the law when he was president, but did not succeed. On the campaign trail this year, certainly aware of the law’s popularity and lasting power, he has made vague promises to replace it with a superior alternative if he returns to the White House.

Solages also cited proposals by Republicans to cap and cut federal Medicaid spending and introduce a block grant system in which states would have to bid for federal funding to secure benefits.

“Instead of direct funding to the states, they want states to enroll in a Hunger Games-like competition for coverage,” said Solages. “We can’t compete for coverage when it comes to health care,” which will inevitably shrink the Medicaid program and leave many uninsured.

For more than a decade, there has been grumbling about the cost and sustainability of health care coverage under ACA by conservative critics.

Why some oppose the health reform law. 

Many maintain, as they have for years, that coverage plans under ACA can still be too expensive for some middle-class Americans because of high insurance premiums, burdensome cost-sharing requirements, and narrow health insurance networks that limit people’s choice of doctor and hospital.

And with the sting of inflation and rising health care costs, the insured may still struggle to afford higher-than-expected co-payments or deductibles.

While Solages acknowledged that New Yorkers are grappling with growing medical debt and prohibitively expensive prescription prices, reducing investments in existing reforms will only exacerbate these problems, not solve them.

“From womb to tomb, all New Yorkers interact with the health care system, and when you erode health care, you impact the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” she said. “We need to raise our voices against unfair cuts to health care.”

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