Last December a federal judge in Texas ruled that Obamacare was unconstitutional.
At the time the Trump administration wasn’t arguing that the entire law should be scrapped, but only the mandate and the pre-existing conditions portion of the law.
Well apparently that’s all changed now and Trump’s DOJ has decided they agree with the judge and are pushing for the entire law to be scrapped.
Here’s more from Axios:
In a stunning escalation, the Justice Department wants the courts to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act — not just its protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Why it matters: It raises both the real-world and political stakes in a lawsuit where both were already very high. If DOJ ultimately gets its way here, the ripple effects would be cataclysmic. The ACA’s insurance exchanges would go away. So would its Medicaid expansion. Millions would lose their coverage.
- The FDA would lose the authority to approve an entire class of drugs.
- The federal government would lose a lot of its power to test new payment models — in fact, the administration is relying on some of those ACA powers as it explores conservative changes to Medicaid.
Where it stands: Judge Reed O’Connor ruled in December that the ACA’s individual mandate has become unconstitutional, and that the whole law must fall along with it.
- At the time, the Trump administration argued that the courts should only throw out the mandate and protections for pre-existing conditions — not the whole law.
- But in a one-page filing last night, DOJ said the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals should affirm O’Connor’s entire ruling.
What concerns me isn’t the scrapping of Obamacare (even though I’m now using the exchanges for the first time), should that happen. No, it’s the fact that we’ve got gridlock in Congress.
If the law is ruled unconstitutional, I don’t see how Republicans and Democrats can find a way forward to undo the damage from the Obamacare law and protect people who might lose their coverage. Not to mention the fact that many Democrats now support the radical Medicare-for-all plan.
Obamacare still has a long way to go in the courts, however, and with Roberts on the high court you never know what’s gonna happen.