The Affordable Care Act faces legal challenges that could derail it, and major changes to the legislation are likely and warranted, says Dr. James Stephens, the Distinguished Fellow in Healthcare Leadership at Georgia Southern University’s Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health.But Stephens, an associate professor who directs the college’s Master of Healthcare Administration program, told the Statesboro Rotary Club that elements of the ACA should be preserved. He used the initials but not the program’s popular nickname, Obamacare.“The question facing the citizens of this country and its government is what parts of the ACA can be made to work and what parts must be changed,” Stephens said Monday. “It’s right to provide health care coverage to the uninsured, and we would not be a caring and compassionate country if we take the coverage away from the 8 million people who have it now and do not provide an option to those who need it.”The 8 million he referred to are previously uninsured people who have signed up for insurance through the federal health care exchange or state exchanges set up by a minority of the states.The country also has too much invested in the program — “probably a trillion dollars” — to just drop it, Stephens suggested.But with something more than 8 million people signed up, rather than the 40 million the administration projected, the program cannot maintain itself as designed, he said.In Stephens’ assessment, the legislation “was not enacted with sufficient care, debate and/or legal craftsmanship.”