Lawmakers work to make sure any ACA repeal won't leave people uninsured

Melissa Nelson is a breast cancer survivor, a mother, a full-time student and also on insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

"I was employed and decided I wanted to go back to school, and in order to do that I needed to go part time, and I could only get coverage through Obamacare," said Nelson, an Osceola County resident.

Before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, Nelson’s 2013 diagnosis of breast cancer would have meant that if she had left her employer’s health plan, finding new coverage would have been virtually impossible.

Related: How President Trump's executive order impacts future of 'Obamacare'

But under the ACA and its requirement that insurance carriers accept people with pre-existing conditions, Nelson was able to find coverage and has been cancer-free ever since.

“There are a lot of things that you worry about that have nothing to do with health insurance, but when you make an appointment to go see your doctor and you don't have health insurance, everything changes," said Nelson.

It is stories like Nelson’s that congressional Democrats have been collecting since the first of the year in an effort to pressure Republicans to craft a repeal that doesn’t leave people without options for health care.

The concerted push to save part of the Affordable Care Act appears to be taking shape with members not just collecting personal stories but also by highlighting specific parts of the law that have a direct impact on citizens.

"If you repeal the ACA, the $1,000 a year that our seniors are getting in drugs through Medicare, all of that would be wiped out," says Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida.
"That was called the closing of the 'doughnut hole' and that would go back to the way it was before the ACA, and seniors on average would be $1,000 a year out-of-pocket. I don't think people want to do that to our senior citizens."

In an interview with Channel 9, Nelson said his Washington, D.C., office has fielded calls from people concerned about the repeal of the act.

“Right now the devil is in the details, and that is why there is so much anxiety on the part of people who say ‘repeal, repeal.’ They don’t have a replacement,” said Nelson.

Republicans are working on a replacement plan.
This week, Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, unveiled the Patient Freedom Act of 2017.

Under the plan, states would have three potions: opt out of federal assistance, create their own insurance system or keep the existing ACA structure.
The plan, while the newest, is one of many Republicans have floated out in recent weeks; none have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office to determine economic impacts, cost or coverage.

"To take something away from 20 million people that depend on it is just mind-boggling to me," said freshman Rep. Val Demings, D-Orlando.
"This is the greatest country in the world, and to me, that means that every person should have access."

Complicating matters, a report released this week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds insurers apprehensive over the uncertainty surrounding a replacement.

The study found that while insurers are contractually obligated to honor plans in 2017, “They would ‘seriously consider’ a market withdrawal in 2018 if the mandate is repealed without an effective replacement.”

Across the country, 22 million people are enrolled through the ACA, with 1.6 million people enrolled in Florida and 318,394 enrolled in the Central Florida region.

Cox Media Group