ABSTRACT
In 2015, about halfway to the presidential election of 2016, the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is threatened in at least three different ways. Additional legal challenges similar to King v. Burwell could be contrived and might succeed. A Republican-dominated Congress might repeal part or all of the ACA. On March 5, 2015, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on King v. Burwell, with a decision expected in June of 2015. The elections of 2016 may change the prospects for the ACA, including Medicaid, but both past history and Medicaid's role in the Act itself, argue that Medicaid is likely to survive any "replacement" of the ACA and could have an even larger role in the future. Of course, the presidential election of 2016 could change the political climate. Moreover, an alternative to "scrapping" the ACA could be selective repeal or impeding the implementation of particular sections of the act.
