Philo D. Hall, an Associate of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in Law360, in “Latest ACA Repeal Failure Only a Pause, Not a Full Stop,” by Daniel Wilson. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
The failure of the Senate to move forward with its latest Affordable Care Act repeal bill will likely put similar efforts on ice for the rest of the year, but other attempts to at least tweak if not repeal the ACA will likely resume in the future, experts say. …
A possible spanner in the works, however — at least in the current political environment — is that the Murray-Alexander effort is still under the broader framework of the ACA, a toxic label for many Republicans, Epstein Becker Green associate Philo Hall, a former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and White House adviser, noted.
“Anything that has the ACA brand is too far for many Republicans in the current climate,” he said.
It’s likely that partisan passions around the ACA may need some time to cool off before any bipartisan progress on possible incremental health care tweaks, with a silver lining that a continued pause in discussions could give health policy wonks a chance to step back and take a fresh look at potential bipartisan options, “perhaps something new that is not so toxic to one side or the other,” Hall claimed.