Twenty states have filed another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
Their complaint argues that
- Congress has repealed the penalty for going without insurance
- The ACA is still the law and still requires people to get insurance (there’s just no consequences anymore)
- A penalty-free mandate is unconstitutional (perhaps, but debatable)
- And thus the court is required to invalidate the whole ACA.
Bagely writes:
What the case does, instead, is force the Trump administration to decide whether it will defend the ACA from constitutional attack. The Justice Department has an entrenched, longstanding, and bipartisan commitment to defending congressional statutes if reasonable arguments can be made in their defense. It’s a bedrock convention of our constitutional structure, one that prevents the executive branch from using litigation strategy to undo Congress’s handiwork.
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“In a brief filed in a Texas federal court and an accompanying letter to the House and Senate leaders of both parties, the Justice Department agrees in large part with the 20 Republican-led states that brought the suit. They contend that the ACA provision requiring most Americans to carry health insurance soon will no longer be constitutional and that, as a result, consumer insurance protections under the law will not be valid, either.
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At this point it is important to remember that those consumer protections include
- protection against refusal to provide insurance because of pre-existing conditions
- control over premium increases
- an end to lifetime and yearly limits on coverage
- an end to insurance companies canceling your health insurance because you get sick
- coverage of young adults under 25
- guaranteed right to appeal your plan’s denial of payment
- and end to denial of coverage for emergency care outside your health plan’s network
- birth control coverage
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Bagley writes,
But declining to defend the ACA could have implications for whether the Trump administration chooses to enforce it. That’s a question that has become urgent with Idaho’s decision to flout the law. Unless HHS intervenes, other states will likely follow its lead. It’d be much harder for HHS to step in if the Justice Department takes the position that the whole law is unconstitutional.
Hearseeno 