The Trump administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to overturn the Obama-era Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. Trump’s renewed attack on the landmark healthcare law which provides coverage to nearly 20 million Americans comes in the midst of a raging pandemic, and record-high unemployment.
In a late-night briefing, Solicitor General Noel Francisco petitioned the court to overturn Obamacare, arguing that the entire law became invalid and essentially unconstitutional when the previous Republican-led Congress reduced the penalty for remaining uninsured to zero, but maintained its requirement that virtually all Americans have coverage.
“No further analysis is necessary; once the individual mandate and the guaranteed-issue and community-rating provisions are invalidated, the remainder of the ACA cannot survive,” the Justice Department stated. Just last month, President Donald Trump confirmed that his administration would continue to press for the elimination of the ACA, ignoring warnings of political backlash for undermining healthcare during the coronavirus emergency.
The filing came on the same day that the US set a new single-day record for coronavirus cases, reporting more than 39,818 new infections across the country on Thursday. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also warned that the case numbers are almost certainly vastly underreported. As unemployment soars, millions more could come to depend on the law for health coverage, and its end would also threaten protections for people with preexisting conditions.
The move has been sharply criticized by Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced the administration’s tactics, saying that its campaign “to rip away the protections and benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty”. Former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden also lashed out at Trump’s “senseless crusade against health coverage” during an overwhelming public health crisis, arguing that it would only worsen an already inadequate government response. Biden, who was Vice President when the law was enacted in 2010, has called for strengthening it by raising federal premium subsidies, and allowing more people to qualify for them. He has also stated his hope to add in a public option and lower Medicare eligibility aid to 60.
An estimated 27 million people may have lost their basic health coverage due to coronavirus-induced layoffs, and it is unclear if and what these people are turning to as a fallback. Under the Obama-era legislation, those who lose employer health care are eligible for a special sign-up period for subsidized plans, and many also qualify for Medicaid. Government figures show that in this year alone, approximately 487,000 people signed up at HealthCare.gov after losing workplace coverage, marking a 46% increase in enrollment from the same time period last year.
Lawmakers have also emphasized the law’s importance in providing coverage to Black, Latino, and Asian Americans. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said: “The ACA has been life-changing and now through this pandemic, we can all see the value in having greater access to quality health care at affordable prices. Now is not the time to rip away our best tool to address very real and very deadly health disparities in our communities.”
The case will be heard by the Justices sometime in the next term later this year, but a decision may not come until 2021.
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US Department of Justice asks Supreme Court to Overturn Obamacare
The landmark healthcare law provides coverage to nearly 20 million Americans.
June 26, 2020
