CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Court Rules Obamacare Mandate Unconstitutional, Puts Entire Law At Risk  Thu Dec 19, 2019 12:34 am | |
| It's a win for Republicans trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act and sure to prompt an appeal to the Supreme Court.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Affordable Care Act’s “individual mandate” is unconstitutional, putting insurance for 20 million Americans in jeopardy and threatening to throw the health care system into chaos.
What happens next will likely depend on the Supreme Court, where the case is almost certainly headed, although it may be a while before it gets there. The law will remain in place at least until that happens.
The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans upheld key elements of a controversial, widely criticized decision that a district court handed down last year. The lower court had held that a GOP-controlled Congress rendered the entire statute unconstitutional in 2017 when it eliminated the Affordable Care Act’s tax penalty for people who violated the law’s individual mandate to have health coverage.
The 2-1 decision by the three-judge panel is not a full endorsement of that ruling, because it argues that parts of the Affordable Care Act unconnected to the individual mandate might be constitutional. For that reason, the appeals court remanded the case back to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, to decide which (if any) parts of the law can stay in force.
“In terms of what it does, it decides that the individual mandate is unconstitutional ― and that a big chunk of the ACA may be invalid,” Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor, told HuffPost. “But it doesn’t say how much or how little is invalid, and leaves it to Judge O’Connor [to decide].”
State Democratic officials who are defending the law plan to immediately appeal the ruling directly to the Supreme Court, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said at a news conference held after the 5th Circuit issued its ruling. The Supreme Court already has rejected two other challenges to the constitutionality of Obamacare.
“Today’s decision in Texas v. Azar is a win for all Americans and confirms what I have said all along: that the individual mandate, by far the worst element of Obamacare, is unconstitutional,” President Donald Trump said in a statement. Trump also stated that his administration will continue implementing the Affordable Care Act while the case goes through the courts.
Whether or not the high court takes the case right away, it’s virtually certain to hear the case at some point. And if it rules against the Affordable Care Act, as the lower courts have, the effects would be far-reaching and devastating.
The Affordable Care Act has transformed the U.S. health care system by opening up state Medicaid programs to more than 12 million low-income people and offering subsidies to more than 9 million low- and middle-income insurance buyers. The law also imposed new rules protecting people with preexisting conditions, guaranteed a basic minimum set of benefits under private insurance policies and eliminated yearly or lifetime caps on how much medical care insurance will cover. The Urban Institute projects that throwing out the law would leave 20 million more Americans uninsured, a 65% increase.
If the Affordable Care Act comes off the books, the number of Americans without coverage would skyrocket and those preexisting condition protections would vanish. And despite Trump’s repeated assertions, neither the White House nor congressional Republicans have a plan at the ready to mitigate the damage this ruling would do to the health care system.
“Americans must not be fooled: Republicans have no plan to lower costs and expand health care coverage, only a lawsuit that takes it all away,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.
A final decision to end Obamacare would also have significant political ramifications, although it is unclear, given that the case has been sent back to a lower court, whether a ruling from the Supreme Court would come before or after the 2020 election.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/court-rules-obamacare-mandate-unconstitutional_n_5d5d59abe4b0d043dd73e879?ri18n=true |
|
