The following article by Colin Seeberger and Jake Faleschini was posted on the Center for American Progress website August 30, 2018:
Next week, while President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, fields questions at his confirmation hearings, a judge in a North Texas federal district court will hear oral arguments in a landmark health care case on which the next Supreme Court justice could ultimately rule. The case, brought by 20 Republican attorneys general, challenges the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions and limitations on price gouging older Americans. Congressional Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated the ACA’s individual mandate, opening the door for the lawsuit. In June, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that President Trump personally instructed the U.S. Department of Justice not to defend the specific parts of the ACA against this new legal attack—a dramatic departure from precedent.
When Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his intent to step down from the Supreme Court that same month, experts began sounding the alarm about the threat the case and a new conservative justice could pose to the roughly 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. One expert even said, “Of all of the actions the Trump administration has taken to undermine individual insurance markets, [the decision not to defend the law in court] may be the most destabilizing.” Another expert said the lawsuit could result in:
… a return to what the individual market looked like before the ACA, where insurers would require applicants to fill out long questionnaires about their medical histories, and make decisions based on people’s health and how much to charge.