Republicans are relying on the Affordable Care Act to respond to the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic's fast-moving destruction has pushed Republicans to rely on the Affordable Care Act, the Obama-era legislation that was once the Republican Party's nemisis, writes Suzanne Mettler, the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, in a Washington Post op-ed.

"The law, as written, requires that Americans who have recently lost jobs and insurance coverage to be permitted to enroll in its insurance marketplace, and they are doing so in swelling numbers," she writes with coauthors in the piece. "Meanwhile, Republicans recently backed stimulus legislation that increased federal funding for a critical part of the ACA: Medicaid for lower-income people. And Trump administration regulators have used their authority to insist that insurance plans pay for coronavirus tests as an “essential health benefit” under the ACA — a Republican target in the past."

Read the story in the Washington Post.