By now all of you know the results of the federal and state election results so I won’t recap them here – except to link the results to the prospects for public health policy.
The results in the US House of Representatives suggest that it’s unlikely there will be another effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That doesn’t mean that the ACA is no longer in jeopardy. There’s still an outstanding lawsuit challenging the mandate for health insurance plans to cover preexisting conditions as well as other provisions in the ACA (AZ is on the list of states challenging the law). The US Justice Department will presumably continue to decline to defend the ACA in court.
The fact that the US House will be controlled by the Dems means that there will be an opportunity for additional oversight of the decisions that the federal agencies are making with respect to public heath and health care (e.g. CMS, EPA, DHS, USDA etc.). That oversight authority can be used to ensure that the administrative decisions made by the federal agencies are consistent with their statutory authority.
There will be no party changes in the executive branch here in Arizona and we will continue to have the same governor and presumably the same agency heads. The makeup of the state legislature looks like it will shift a little- but party control won’t change. The Senate will likely remain 17-13. In the House it looks like the new split will be a razor thin 31-29.
Many of the bills that we supported last year passed with bipartisan support- and it remains important to look toward public health policies that are founded with evidence and for us to continue to frame the issues in a way that builds bipartisan support for sound public health policy.