Trump administration asks Supreme Court to invalidate Obamacare

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(CNN)In the midst of a global pandemic with the presidential election just months away, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, the landmark health care law that enabled millions of Americans to get insurance coverage and that remains in effect despite the pending legal challenge.

In a late-night filing, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said that once the law’s individual coverage mandate and two key provisions are invalidated, “the remainder of the ACA should not be allowed to remain in effect.”

The justices will hear arguments in the case sometime next term, although it is unclear if they will occur before the November election.

The dispute ensures another major shift in the political landscape during the election season on an issue that has dominated American politics for the last decade. It will be the third time the court has heard a significant challenge to the law. The case pits a coalition of Democratic attorneys general led by California and the House of Representatives, which are defending the law, against the Trump administration and a group of red state attorneys general led by Texas.

At issue is whether the law’s individual mandate was rendered unconstitutional because Congress reduced the penalty for remaining uninsured to zero and, if so, whether that would bring down the entire law. A federal appeals court in December ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional but punted the decision on which, if any, of the law’s provisions could be retained back to the district court – which had previously found the entire law to be invalidated.

The administration has generally sided with the Republican attorneys general but recently argued that the entire law should fall but that the ruling should only apply to the 18 states that brought the challenge.

In Thursday’s filing, Francisco stressed, “Nothing the 2017 Congress did demonstrates it would have intended the rest of the ACA to continue to operate in the absence of these three integral provisions.”

He said that “the entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate, though the scope of relief entered in this case should be limited to provisions shown to injure the plaintiffs.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sharply criticized the administration after the late-night filing.

“President Trump and the Republicans’ 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,” she said in a statement Thursday.

Earlier Thursday, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, lashed out at President Donald Trump for continuing to support upending the law.
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Just one more nail in the coffin of an ill fated reelection attempt…in the midst of lost employment (and hence benefits) because of gross negligence in handling a response to the virus, it seems ludicrous to now tamper with ACA.

T minus 209 days (or is it “minus T[rump] in 209 days”).

Either way will be a good day for America and the world.
 
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dscath said:
Just one more nail in the coffin of an ill fated reelection attempt…
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The brief includes a section pointedly arguing that the Affordable Care Act’s pre-existing condition rules must be overturned as well. Those rules forbid insurers from turning away customers or charging them more on the basis of factors like age, gender and health status. The position contradicts Trump’s insistence that he will protect people with pre-existing conditions.
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I really don’t understand what Trump is thinking. It seems that he’s putting his need to destroy anything related to Obama above the needs of the country. Perhaps he is coming to grips with the fact that he going to lose in November, so he’s decided to burn everything down on his way out the door.
 
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ChuckB said:
I really don’t understand what Trump is thinking.
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I would love to know exactly what he is thinking too…however, what he is thinking is no longer relevant…usually “lame duck” is reserved for a second term president who cannot run again, but in the case of Trump, I think the moniker fits him, in that he has snatched defeat out of the mouth of what could have been certain victory…thank goodness!
 
dscath said:
in the case of Trump, I think the moniker fits him, in that he has snatched defeat out of the mouth of what could have been certain victory…thank goodness
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One need only look at the various news stories and polling data from the last election to know that this statement is likely premature.
 
Those that do not learn from history at doomed to repeat it.

The lesson people should learn from the last election is to never assume the outcome of an election.
 
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