Almost as soon as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed a year ago, the law’s opponents proposed defunding the legislation. Unlike outright repeal (which the Senate rejected in January), defunding picks apart the law in pieces by including health care reform cuts in popular bills or by eliminating money for key provisions of the ACA.

A bill passed by the House last month demonstrates the tactics at work. Designed to finance the government for the rest of 2011, it included three attempts to throw a wrench in reform. All of them would have severe consequences for young people.

One amendment would eliminate funding for the agencies responsible for implementing health reform. That would endanger many new consumer protections. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services would need to stop work on rules to ensure that college students receive the same benefits from reform as everyone else. The agency would also have to end oversight of the rule allowing young people to stay on their parent’s plan until age 26.

Another provision would ban the IRS from spending money on enforcing the personal responsibility requirement to buy insurance. Eliminating this key piece of the health reform law would reduce the number of people purchasing insurance, thereby raising premiums for everyone. Because young people are generally low income, they would suffer from higher prices.

And a third section would eliminate all “discretionary” funding for health care reform. In other words, ACA programs that rely on yearly approval from Congressional would receive no money at all this year.  For example, some grants to medical students planning to work in primary care clinics or rural health centers would disappear instantly.

Fortunately, the House bill containing these onerous provisions (and several others) had no chance in the Senate. But if health reform supporters don’t stand strong, other, more popular bills may carry through provisions that pick away at the ACA.

Rory grew up in San Francisco, graduating from Pomona College in 2006 with a B.A. in Philosophy Politics, and Economics. He is currently pursuing a joint J.D./M.P.P. at Georgetown University and has worked in a variety of policy-oriented positions since coming to Washington, D.C