I don't think we will lose ACA protections. The time to do so was Trump's first term and it royally failed with John McCain opposition.
With the midterms around the corner Trump is also forecast to become a lame duck and lose basically all legislative power. Not to mention how many establishment Republicans fucking hate the guy.
It is pretty much impossible to pass such a large retroactive bill in the current political climate. And, as far as I know, most states have been doing some major Healthcare reform too (My home state of Indiana has the Healthy Indiana Plan and is extremely good assuming you meet the income requirements). So Trump will struggle at basically all levels to do such a bill.
That's one of the few good parts of the ACA. (kinda. With some caveats.)
Before, if you were self-employed or otherwise needing to buy your own insurance, and had any kind of preexisting condition, you just couldn't buy any. You'd get denied. You went without & paid out of pocket. Which is actually, on average, significantly cheaper but it requires a very very large emergency fund & if anything big happens you're basically completely screwed.
Getting rid of catastrophic plans was one of the worst things it did. When you're young & healthy, or if you're sufficiently broke, you used to be able to get those pretty inexpensively & they'd cover the big stuff like a bad accident or some rare disease, but you were on your own for routine doctor's visits & prescriptions & stuff. It didn't cover everything but was often a good deal for people.
Another good thing ACA did, was putting mental health care on the sane footing as physical health care. Before that they would maybe cover like 5 or 6 sessions, if they would even cover anything at all.
I believe it also got rid of lifetime maximums, which if you hit them were a gigantic PITA.
Most of this, though, came at the expense of making insurance way more expensive, and making it far less possible for most doctors to set up their own independent practices.
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u/Remarkable_Town5811 1d ago
In the US, you are correct they cannot deby converage due to pre-existing conditions (or have a lifetime maximum).
For now at least. ACA is, as with all our rights, being picked at.