Americans now expect that health insurance will be available to them at an affordable price, "and I really don't think it's possible to turn the clock back on that expectation," said Suffolk University Law Professor Renée Landers in a radio interview about the future of the Affordable Care Act. “That is one of the challenges for the Republicans in the repeal effort,” she said.
John Hockenberry, host of The Takeaway, interviewed Landers, faculty director of the Law School’s health and biomedical law concentration, and Jonathan Gruber of MIT for a segment that aired nationwide.
Listen to Landers on The Takeaway.
Landers also discussed the Affordable Care Act on the WGBH Greater Boston television show with host Jim Braude; Don Berwick, the former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who helped launch the Affordable Care Act; and Joshua Archambault of the Pioneer Institute.
She noted a failure to persuade the public of the health care law’s advantages.
“Even now, the people who benefit from the Medicaid expansion or the fact that their children can stay on their health insurance until age 26 don’t understand that those are benefits that come from the Affordable Care Act,” said Landers.
“Those things cannot stay and provide effective coverage to people without keeping some of the funding mechanisms and without keeping everyone in the insurance pool,” she said.