The Obama administration is pushing back on doubts about the future of the Affordable Care Act individual insurance marketplace.

Despite withdrawals from the marketplace by major insurers and big premium increases for marketplace health plans, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said on Thursday that the marketplace remains stable.

Burwell told reporters that the marketplace would remain functional even in the absence of improvements by the next administration, the The New York Times reports.

Her comments stand in contrast to those made by opponents of the law. The Tennessee insurance commissioner said recently that the marketplace in that state was close to collapsing after she approved major rate hikes for health plans.

The administration is still eager to make improvements to the system that have thus far been stymied by a Republican Congress that does not want to engage with Obamacare in any way besides repealing it. The administration recently put together a lengthy briefing with a number of suggested fixes to the system that it hopes the next president would be able to implement.

To improve the marketplace, the administration is ramping up efforts to get young people to enroll. Officials are going to specifically reach out to millennials whose tax records indicate they paid a penalty for going without insurance last year.

It is far from clear what will happen to the ACA under the next president, whoever that may be. Donald Trump has promised to repeal the law, but exactly how he would do that or what he would implement in its stead remains vague. Hillary Clinton has vowed to expand the law, including by adopting a public option insurance plan to compete with private sector plans, a policy that the insurance industry will undoubtedly fight ferociously.

Any major health policy changes will not be possible without the cooperation of Congress. While it’s anybody’s guess who might control the Senate next year, the House of Representatives is all but guaranteed to remain under GOP control.

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Obama administration insists ACA marketplace is stable

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