 Now, to health care costs under Obamacare, changes made to the landmark law could open the way for states to offer cheaper plans that cover less. New Jersey representative Frank Polone's introduced a bill to shore up what's left of the Affordable Care Act. Breonna Vinosi reports. People actually thought the ACA was gone, that they were able to dismantle it. Actually, the ACA is still alive, though many suspect it could be on life support sooner than later. But Trump administration's rollbacks, more specifically the repeal of the individual mandate, is having a significant effect here at home. We've had 20,000 fewer individuals in the open enrollment period at the end of 2017 signing up for this year for the individual market. So Congressman Frank Polone is pushing his federal bill that expands and protects the provisions in the ACA. His legislation gets rid of the cap on eligibility for tax credits. That means everyone enrolled gets something. This is the amount of those tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies, and perhaps most important to the folks on the ground restores funding for outreach and advertising. It'll also keep requirements in place for essential health care. In other words, no junk plans allowed. You know, the Republicans say to me, oh, what are you worried about? You know, we believe in personal responsibility. Everybody has to take responsibility for their plan. How many of the people that are actually buying these things know that it doesn't include hospitalization, or it doesn't include maternity, or it doesn't include pediatric care. They don't know. That's the problem. If you lower those standards for certain plans, what's going to happen is that healthier people will go into those plans, and sicker people will have to go into the plans that we already have, which will get higher and higher. So it's going to have a huge impact on individuals who are the sickest in our state. The risk pool is compromised when healthy people drop out, when it's harder for insurance plans to stay in the individual market, and then, of course, premiums rise for people and then access to health care suffers. Health care advocates shared stories of patients who are suffering from the initial changes to the law. New Jersey saw a 23 percent increase in premiums this year. If you're making $60,000 and you're an individual, you're not eligible for any subsidies at all under the federal rules. And they're bearing the full 20 percent increase, and they just can't afford that. State Senator Joe Vitale has a dual bill package to support the marketplace, allowing instead the state to impose an individual mandate and setting up a special security fund to collect the money and redistribute it to stabilize the market. What we would do is have our individual mandate kick in when that ends, so sort of a seamless transition to both, to the new one. And then the reinsurance element of this package takes time to develop. And so we would apply to CMS for that waiver, like other states have done. We're trying to sell this on a bipartisan basis. We're trying to get it even into the omnibus of spending bill that we're going to hopefully adopt this week. I can't imagine that all of it will get in there. Maybe some of it will. So with little help from Republicans in Washington, Congressman Frank Polone and his Democratic colleagues are counting on state leaders to keep what's left of this law intact. In Perth, Amboy, Briana Venosi, NJTV News.