Tag: ACA

Supreme Court Rules for Insurers in $12 Billion Obamacare Case

New York Times logoIn an 8-to-1 decision, the court said the government must shield insurers from losses under the Affordable Care Act.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the federal government must live up to its promise to shield insurance companies from some of the risks they took in participating in the exchanges established by President Barack Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the majority in the 8-to-1 ruling, said the court’s decision vindicated “a principle as old as the nation itself: The government should honor its obligations.”

The health care law had promised the insurers that they would be protected, she wrote, and it did not matter that Congress later failed to appropriate money to cover the insurers’ shortfalls. Continue reading.

‘This is despicable’: Not even COVID-19 pandemic can halt Trump’s right-wing takeover of federal courts

AlterNet logoCritics warn the president’s latest nominees for lifetime appellate court positions are both committed to the “deadly agenda” of overturning the entire Affordable Care Act.

As the coronavirus pandemic continued to ravage the United States this week, killing and infecting thousands while shuttering schools and businesses, President Donald Trump proceeded with his ongoing effort to shift the federal judiciary to the far-right by announcing a fresh pair of lifetime nominees to appellate courts.

“Who is Justin Walker, Trump’s new D.C. Circuit nominee? He’s a Mitch McConnell and Brett Kavanaugh crony who is staunchly anti-healthcare.”
—Demand Justice

Continue reading.

How the Trump Administration’s Deregulation Agenda Has Worsened the Coronavirus Pandemic

Center for American Progress logoIn 2015, Donald Trump promised: “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” Yet, long before news of the COVID-19 outbreak reached the United States, the Trump administration had been dismantling policies and proposing new ones that have vastly exacerbated the coronavirus pandemic.

As the United States braces to combat a public health crisis and a severe economic downturn, it is important to note that the Trump administration’s policies have contributed to this crisis. Three years of deregulation under the Trump presidency and a botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic have in part spurred what may be one of the costliest public health crises in American history—both financially and in terms of human life. This column breaks down four of the Trump administration’s deregulatory actions that have worsened the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

Dismantling the Affordable Care Act

More than 27 million Americans, about 9 percent of the U.S. population, have no health insurance coverage. Despite a yearslong decline in the number of uninsured Americans following the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Trump administration’s effective elimination of the law’s individual mandate, as well as other efforts to undermine comprehensive coverage, led to an increase in the uninsured rate for the first time in 10 years. At the same time, the administration has pushed to allow insurance companies to offer short-term plans with limited coverage, also known as junk plans. While these plans offer cheaper premiums, they provide limited benefits and few consumer protections; enrollees could potentially have massive bills for COVID-19 treatment. Continue reading.

Donald Trump Continue to Attack the ACA During COVID-19 Pandemic

At his press briefing this weekend, and one day ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, Trump doubled down on his lawsuit to repeal the entire law, despite the fact that the law has become one of the most critical tools in the fight against coronavirus.

FALSE CLAIMS:

Trump doubled down on his lawsuit to overturn the ACA and lied that he is putting great health care in its place — he has no plan. 

CNN’s Daniel Dale: “Noted that his administration supports a lawsuit to eradicate the Affordable Care Act, and asked if he’d reconsider given that people are losing jobs/need health care, Trump says what they’re doing is working to ‘get rid of the bad health care and put in a great health care.’”

Trump touted potential coronavirus treatments as being safe and effective, despite health experts warning that hasn’t been proven.

CNN’s Daniel Dale: “Trump on medications approved for other uses and now being tested for the coronavirus: ‘They’re not killing people. We’re not going to have that.’ Doctors warn that there CAN BE serious side effects to these drugs; they haven’t been proven safe and effective here; be careful.” Continue reading “Donald Trump Continue to Attack the ACA During COVID-19 Pandemic”

DNC on 10th Anniversary of the Affordable Care Act

DNC Chair Tom Perez released the following statement on the 10th anniversary of President Obama signing the Affordable Care Act into law:

“The world is in crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic is a sobering reminder of just how important health care is American families. Democrats understand that, which is why 10 years ago today, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. This landmark legislation represented the largest overhaul of our health care system in half a century and improved the lives of millions of Americans.

“Thanks to this law, more than 20 million Americans have gained coverage; the uninsured rate in the United States dropped to a record low; insurers cannot deny or drop coverage for people with preexisting conditions; young people can stay on their parents’ plans until they’re 26 years old; states have been able to expand Medicaid, offering care to millions more Americans; more than 55 million women have gained access to birth control with no co-pay; and insurers can no longer impose cruel annual and lifetime limits on the care you can receive. Continue reading “DNC on 10th Anniversary of the Affordable Care Act”

House HHS Finance Division examines consequences Minnesotans face if Republican efforts to overturn ACA are successful

House DFL logoSAINT PAUL – The Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed into law in 2010, has helped thousands of Minnesotans gain access to the health care they need. Since his election, President Trump and his allies have worked to overturn the ACA, and filed a federal lawsuit that has put the law’s future in jeopardy. On Thursday, the Minnesota House Health and Human Services Finance Division discussed the impacts Minnesotans could face should the federal law be overturned.

“For decades, Minnesota has been a leader in ensuring people have access to the health care they need. But as a result of the Trump administration and their allies’ continued attacks on the ACA, many Minnesotans – especially those with low-incomes or preexisting conditions – are in jeopardy of losing the coverage they depend on,” said Rep. Tina Liebling (DFL – Rochester), who chairs the committee. “We have a responsibility to protect the progress we’ve made to ensure access to coverage for Minnesotans. Instead of going backwards, as Republicans would prefer, we should continue working to reduce prices, increase access, and deliver better health care outcomes.”

After Republicans in the U.S. Congress tried and failed to repeal the ACA, Trump allies filed a federal lawsuit, Texas v. Azar, seeking to overturn the ACA.  If the effort is successful and the law is struck down, there could be far-reaching consequences across the nation’s entire health care system, including impacts on Minnesotans.

Minnesota could lose as much as $2.8 billion in federal funding, including funding for MinnesotaCare and Medicaid expansion, premium tax credits for those who purchase coverage on the individual market, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and more. In 2018, approximately 210,000 low-income Minnesotans were covered under the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid (Medical Assistance).

Since enactment of the ACA, Minnesota has made great progress in reducing its uninsured rate, but President Trump and his allies’ efforts to gut or eliminate the law have reversed this trend. While Trump, Republican lawmakers, and their echo chamber have claimed that they will protect people with pre-existing conditions, they have offered no meaningful plan to do so, nor any plan to allow young people to remain on their parents’ coverage until age 26.

Other protections could also disappear, including essential health benefits like coverage for contraception, mental health, substance use disorder and maternity and newborn care, and the requirement that insurance companies spend a high portion of premiums on actual medical care.

House DFLers are committed to protecting key components of the ACA at the state level, including coverage for preexisting conditions, out-of-pocket maximums, and no-cost preventative care services. They are also working to pass long-overdue legislation to provide emergency insulin and reduce the cost of prescription drugs.

Fearful GOP Senators Drop Attacks On Obamacare

In 2014, Republican David Perdue ran for an open Senate seat in Georgia promising to “Repeal ObamaCare” and “replace it with more affordable free market solutions.”

Six years later, his campaign reelection site has removed all traces of that promise and says only that lawmakers must “finally get after the real drivers of spiraling health care costs.”

Perdue is not alone. A comparison of 2014 and 2020 campaign sites for Republicans in competitive Senate races finds that seven have made their original 2014 anti-Obamacare language disappear. Continue reading.

Trump administration finalizing Medicaid block grant plan targeting Obamacare

The plan is guaranteed to enrage critics and invite attacks from Democrats in an election year.

The Trump administration is finalizing a plan to let states convert a chunk of Medicaid funding to block grants, even as officials remain divided over how to sell the controversial change to the safety net health program.

CMS Administrator Seema Verma plans to issue a letter soon explaining how states could seek waivers to receive defined payments for adults covered by Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, according to seven people with knowledge of the closely guarded effort. An announcement is tentatively slated for the end of next week, more than one year after Verma and her team began developing the plan.

Capping Medicaid spending, even among just Obamacare’s expansion population, would be a major transformation of how the federal government finances the safety net health care program that has grown to cover about 1 in 5 Americans. The plan is guaranteed to enrage critics and invite attacks from Democrats in an election year. Continue reading.

Trump scrambles to defend pre-existing conditions record amid ObamaCare lawsuit

The Hill logoPresident Trump, who is backing a court challenge to the Affordable Care Act that would overturn the law and eliminate its protections for people with pre-existing conditions, is now tweeting about how he saved those protections.

In an election year where Democrats are vowing to focus on health care, Trump’s tweets suggest he is recognizing the political danger posed by his support for the GOP-led lawsuit.

Trump’s efforts have been undercut not only by the court challenge but also his repeated vows to repeal the 2010 law, including support for a House Republican bill in 2017 that would have allowed for weakening protections for pre-existing conditions. Continue reading.