With the passing of the bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the American population is once again receiving a massive blow to their standards of living.

What happened?

The American Health Care Act was passed on May 4th, repealing the provisions of ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, creating virtually a vacuum for the Republican Bill of Healthcare to be passed in the near future. This serves as a major victory for the Republicans, but the material repercussions as extremely notable as well. The plan cuts away approximately $1 trillion in funding for healthcare across the nation, removing a large number of provisions that are associated with the plan.

One of the most notable removals is the removal of the individual mandate system under the ACA, which is projected to have a large number of uninsured citizens as a result of this mandate. Those who do not have the immediate need as well as those who are incapable of obtaining healthcare would not have to obtain it, which would drastically defer participants of the system until those who need it have an absolute need for it.

Yet another repeal is the employer mandate, which removes the requirement restriction on employers to provide their workers with healthcare. This would also jeopardize those who are under employer care, as profit incentive may incentivize a lot of employers to not provide healthcare to their employees. Instead, employers could require them to obtain healthcare elsewhere through less reliable methods, which would fall further into the difference effect mentioned earlier.

Apart from those specific major repeals, there are a series of other repeals that this bill authorizes. They include the Flexible Spending Account tax, which removes a tax on healthcare savings and flexible spending savings under provisions of the ACA; the Chronic Care tax, which grants deductions to those who need excessive medical care, more than the estimated average; the Excise tax; the Health Insurance tax; and the Prescription Drug tax. All of those cuts together count up to an approximate $1 trillion in tax cuts.

What does this mean?

Tax cuts on the surface may seem extremely beneficial for the general American public. However, the cuts being derived from healthcare may cause this to be extremely problematic, as such extreme neglect for one of the most vital things to a population may result in severe backlash in terms of governmental support. The idea of healthcare becoming laissez-faire, as envisioned by the Republicans, can have extremely problematic consequences in terms of the perspective of the public. It would become yet another market with profit motive, whereas the general public would become the targets of exploitation.

This is only the beginning, however. The actual provisions of the plan have yet to be revealed. The provisions may either bring about aspects of the plan that the public may be looking forward to, or aspects that could make the livelihood of the general public much worse than how it is in the status quo.

For now, all we can do is watch.