Full disclosure: I’m fortunate enough to enjoy adequate health care through my employer.

That said, 20 million Americans get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. It’s commonly called “Obamacare”and Republicans have promised to repeal it since its passage in 2010.

President Elect Trump jumped on the bandwagon from day one in his campaign. Several times he’s called the ACA a disaster and has promised to replace it with a better plan.

I hope he’s right but I have grave reservations. Congress can effectively dismantle the ACA without any Democratic support by defunding it. It’s kind of like telling your child you’re not prohibiting him from buying a new car while emptying his checking account.

By the way, if you’re going to comment that I’m using only links from “liberal” sources, Fox News hasn’t written about defunding the ACA since June 7, 2016 when Senate Republicans promised not to do it. [Update: I’m writing this on the evening of January 7th. The Fox News Website has posted what appears to be a rough cut transcript of “The Kelly File” from January 4th. I can’t tell when it was posted but it appears to have been posted after my post. You can read it here]

And now back to our story. Legislation passes the House of Representatives by a simple majority while the minority party in the Senate can filibuster which requires 60 of the 100 Senators to override.

So here’s the problem: Republicans are claiming they will repeal and replace the ACA. But any replacement will require 60 Senators which will require the support of at least 7 Democrats. This gives the Republicans the ability to “replace” the ACA with clearly unacceptable legislation and then blame the Democrats for being obstructionist.

Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway insists that nobody who has health insurance will lose it. I hope she’s right.