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Federal Judge in Texas Says Affordable Care Act Unconstitutional; What's Next?
Trump and Republicans have many ways to destroy Obamacare despite the failure to repeal it in the Senate in 2017. They eliminated the individual mandate in the 2017 tax scam that handed corporations and the wealthiest Americans billions of dollars. They have stripped reimbursements to insurers forcing them to leave the exchanges, ended marketing of the healthcare plans, allowed junk plans that insure almost nothing which crash the system, and more.
The latest came last Friday night:
In a shocking legal ruling, a federal judge in Texas wiped Obamacare off the books Friday night. The decision, issued after business hours on the eve of the deadline to enroll for health insurance for 2019, focuses on the so-called individual mandate. Yet it purports to declare the entire law unconstitutional — everything from the Medicaid expansion, the ban on pre-existing conditions, Medicare and pharmaceutical reforms to much, much more.
This all stems from a court case Smart Dissent discussed at length HERE. In this case, we pointed out back in June 2018 that Trump and Jeff Sessions told this federal court to destroy the Affordable Care Act.
The Trump administration told a federal court on Thursday [June 7, 2018] that it would no longer defend crucial provisions of the Affordable Care Act that protect consumers with pre-existing medical conditions. Under those provisions of the law, insurance companies cannot deny coverage or charge higher rates to people with pre-existing conditions.
The Justice Department said the provisions were part of an unconstitutional scheme that required most Americans to carry health insurance. In a court case filed by Texas and 19 other states, the Justice Department said in a brief on Thursday that the requirement for people to have insurance — the individual mandate — was unconstitutional.
The Justice Department said that the protections for people with pre-existing conditions were inseparable from the individual mandate and must also be struck down.
Now that Court has sided with Republicans, Trump, and Sessions.
The individual mandate is the law’s controversial requirement that all Americans maintain qualifying health insurance coverage or pay a penalty. In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld this penalty as an exercise of Congress’s taxing power. In 2017, unable to get the votes to repeal the entire law, Congress just zeroed out the penalty.
In this case, Texas and 19 other states....argued — and Judge Reed O’Connor agreed — that the rest of Obamacare must fall, too. They claim that the mandate is so central to the A.C.A. that nothing else in it can operate without it.
That’s not how the relevant law works. A ruling this consequential had better be based on rock-solid legal argument. Instead, the opinion by O’Connor is an exercise of raw judicial power, unmoored from the relevant doctrines concerning when judges may strike down a whole law....
What happens next?
The health law is likely to continue in place while the case moves to the higher courts. California, the leader of a group of states that stepped in to defend the law because the Justice Department refused to do so, will almost certainly go to the Fifth Circuit — the federal appellate court that presides over Texas — to have the effects of the decision paused and the case reviewed. The House of Representatives will also likely join the lawsuit once the Democrats take control.
If the Fifth Circuit reverses Judge O’Connor, we think it unlikely the Supreme Court will take the case. If the Fifth Circuit upholds the ruling, we are skeptical a majority of the court would sustain this weak analysis.
Sources:
http://smartdissent.com/article/update-sept-10th-trumps-doj-will-be-court-fighting-remove
http://smartdissent.com/article/trumps-doj-tells-federal-courts-remove-healthcare-protections