The 115th Congress has convened on January 3rd of this month, setting in what will be a Republican majority lead coalition. While most Americans wait to see what will follow in President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration on 20th, Trump has already pushed for Republican mobilization in repealing the Affordable Care Act in a New York Times phone interview. The President-Elect stated, “We have to get to business. Obamacare has been a catastrophic event,” calling for the repeal to occur “probably sometime next week”.

This message to the newly formed Congress leaves many Republican lawmakers confused in the President-Elect’s intentions. If Republican lawmakers were to follow in his remarks they would be put in an impossible situation of having only weeks to repeal and replace the health care law, which took almost two years to pass through Congress during Obama’s Administration.

If a repeal were to follow, with no foundation for replacement to the act, up to 24 million Americans would lose health coverage by 2021 according to a study issued by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute. Further it would add to the 29.6 million uninsured at the time, even with the Affordable Care Act still in place, nearly doubling the uninsured rate to 19.4% from what it is now. The study follows with that between the years 2017 and 2026, following the repeal, the spending for federal health care would decrease by $927 billion. Although state spending would increase by $68.5 billion around the same period, as many Americans would have to receive uncompensated care as a result to the increase of people uninsured.

Coming back to these past weeks, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to affectively state a target date for a possible repeal bill, nor when legislation for replacement would be pushed forward. Declining in to give any specifications on the subject of the health care law. McConnell told reporters in a conference, “We’re going to be involved with the administration, the House and the Senate, in crafting a package that we can all agree on that will provide a smooth transition from the disaster we have now to what comes next.”

Some Republicans have put pressure to move deadlines for the repeal legislation to later this year in March, one of those Republicans being Senator Susan Collins of Maine. Senator Collins had stated, “In an ideal situation, we would repeal and replace Obama Care simultaneously, but we need to make sure that we have at least a detailed framework that tells the American people what direction we’re headed”. Collins went further in response to repealing and replacing the entrenched health care law in a matter of weeks “would be very difficult to do”.

Whether you support for the repeal legislation of the Affordable Care Act or not, either choice would have significance on the millions of Americans currently insured or uninsured by the health care law (as well as Medicare and Medicaid services).