With the election behind us, many assume the uncertainty surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at the federal level has vanished.

But whether the law succeeds in making health care more affordable and whether people’s lives will actually be improve now depends on how it is implemented. For instance, the Affordable Care Act is supposed to guarantee that insurers cover so-called essential health benefits, or EHB. However, those essential benefits have yet to be fully determined by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). What it decides will have a huge impact on how well the law works.