27 January 2017 - After spending much of the past seven years trying to repeal Obamacare, Republicans in Congress finally have the power to do it. And they got off to a quick start. 

A week before Donald Trump was sworn in as president, the House and Senate voted to begin the process of repealing the law.

Yet as Republicans rush to roll back President Obama’s signature health-care achievement, they’re still struggling to come up with something to replace it. At the heart of the problem is figuring out how to undo the intricate framework of mandates and taxes that form the basis of the Affordable Care Act. If you require insurance companies to cover someone, regardless of preexisting conditions, premiums would skyrocket. 

To keep premiums at reasonable levels, you have to insist that everyone buy insurance—even healthy people who think they don’t need it. To make sure low-income people can pay the premiums, you have to offer them subsidies. To fund it all without increasing the budget deficit, you need taxes.

Read Bloomberg article