Tag: Affordable Care Act

Congress Could Easily Make the Obamacare Supreme Court Case Disappear. Republicans Don’t Want To.

If the GOP really wants voters to believe they support people with preexisting conditions, here’s a simple way to prove it.

Republicans are outraged ― outraged! ― that anyone would believe they don’t support protecting people with preexisting conditions from health insurance discrimination. They feel so strongly about this that they are doing absolutely nothing about it.

Tears are flowing heavily on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail as Republicans try to distance themselves from a pending Supreme Court lawsuit that would kill the Affordable Care Act and its guarantee that health insurance companies provide coverage to anyone regardless of medical history, and without extra charges for preexisting conditions.

“Every Republican agrees we’re going to protect preexisting conditions,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on CNBC last month. “One hundred out of 100 senators agree we’re going to protect preexisting conditions regardless of what happens with Obamacare.” Continue reading.

Democrats seek to tie Barrett to Trump on Affordable Care Act as confirmation hearings begin

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Senate Democrats are seeking to tie Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett to President Trump’s push to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on the first day of her confirmation hearings in an effort to dispel any doubt how she will rule on health care if placed on the court.

In interviews Monday morning and their opening statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats homed in on health care, and specifically former President Obama’s signature health care law, an issue they view as favorable to their side and one on which they previewed a heavy focus.

The challenge Democrats face is that while they claim Barrett will overturn ObamaCare, the judge has never explicitly said she would do so, though she has dropped big hints about how she’s likely to rule. Continue reading.

Nearly two-thirds of voters support Obamacare

Support for the Affordable Care Act — former President Barack Obama’s signature achievement, which expanded access to health insurance nationwide and protected people from being denied coverage for having preexisting conditions — is now at a record high, according to a Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday.

A whopping 62% of voters support it — up 7 points this year alone.

The rise in support for the law comes as Senate Republicans rush to confirm Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, who has expressed opposition to the law. The Supreme Court will be hearing a case to invalidate Obamacare just after the election, when Barrett could help overturn the law and cause millions of Americans to lose their insurance coverage. Read the post here.

If the Supreme Court Ends Obamacare, Here’s What It Would Mean

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The Affordable Care Act touches the lives of most Americans, and its abolition could have a significant effect on many millions more people than those who get their health coverage through it.

What would happen if the Supreme Court struck down the Affordable Care Act?

The fate of the sprawling, decade-old health law known as Obamacare was already in question, with the high court expected to hear arguments a week after the presidential election in the latest case seeking to overturn it. But now, the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg increases the possibility that the court could abolish it, even as millions of people are losing job-based health coverage during the coronavirus pandemic.

A federal judge in Texas invalidated the entire law in 2018. The Trump administration, which had initially supported eliminating only some parts of the law, then changed its position and agreed with the judge’s ruling. Earlier this year the Supreme Court agreed to take the case. Continue reading.

Trump Says He Will ‘Always’ Protect Those With Pre-Existing Conditions. He Hasn’t.

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The president’s promises on health care stand in stark contrast with his legislative, regulatory and legal record.

In speeches, in tweets, in media interviews, President Trump keeps promising that he will preserve protections for Americans with pre-existing health conditions. It’s a crowd-pleaser of a policy, but one entirely at odds with his administration’s legislative, regulatory and legal record to date.

In the final weeks of the election season, expect to see the words “pre-existing conditions” again and again. Mr. Trump makes the promise so consistently that it is likely to appear in television ads, the presidential debates and possibly in an oft-teased, ever forthcoming executive order on the subject. Vice President Pencesaid Tuesday that the president would “take action” in the days ahead.

But rather than enshrine the ability of Americans with health problems to buy insurance, the Trump administration has, at every turn, pursued policies that have tended to do the opposite.

Some of the efforts to weaken protections have been successful — like an expansion of cheap, lightly regulated health plans that insurers are not required to offer when customers are sick. Others, like multiple attempts to “repeal and replace Obamacare” in 2017, failed to attract enough Republican votes in Congress to pass. The Justice Department’s quest to overturn the Affordable Care Act, while no replacement is being offered, is still underway, with oral arguments scheduled at the Supreme Court in November. Continue reading.

Trump keeps promising an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system that never arrives

Washington Post logoIt was a bold claim when President Trump said that he was about to produce an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system, at last doing away with the Affordable Care Act, which he has long promised to abolish.

“We’re signing a health-care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health-care plan,” Trump pledged in a July 19 interview with “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace.

Now, with the two weeks expiring Sunday, there is no evidence that the administration has designed a replacement for the 2010 health-care law. Instead, there is a sense of familiarity. Continue reading.

Will Roberts Reject Trump’s Legal Assault On Obamacare?

If you’re one of the 23.3 million Americans who depend on Obamacare for your survival, brace yourself for a looming disaster: In the midst of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump is trying yet again to take away your health insurance, and this time he may succeed.

Having failed to persuade Congress to repeal Obamacare in 2017 (remember the historic “thumbs down” vote cast by John McCain), Trump now is asking the Supreme Court to reexamine the law, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), and declare the entire statute unconstitutional in a new case—California v. Texas. The case, which began as a federal lawsuit filed by Texas and a group of other predominantly Republican-led states, has been added to the court’s docket for the 2020 term, which starts in October.

The Trump administration could have elected to defend Obamacare, but instead chose to join Texas in the litigation to destroy it. A coalition of Democratic-led states has intervened in the case to support Obamacare. Continue reading.

Of course there’s a massive tax cut for the super-rich included in Trump’s Obamacare lawsuit

AlterNet logoThere’s a dollop of cream on top of the shit sandwich that is the Trump-backed lawsuit in front of the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA). That’s of course the big sweetener for the people who matter most to Republicans: the Uber Rich. It’s not just taking health care away from the plebes, as satisfying as that would be for Republicans. No, it has to come with a hefty tax cut for the wealthiest—and of course it does.

The highest income 0.1% of households—those making more than $3 million annually—will get tax cuts to the tune of $198,000 if the law is completely overturned, the Tax Policy Center estimates. Now, $200,000 to someone making more than $3 million is more or less couch change, but you can bet they won’t turn it down. It’s not just the richest among us who gain. Those making over $1 million a year would see about $42,000 back in tax cuts. The total loss of revenue should the law be overturned would be about $30 billion in 2020. That itself would pay for Medicaid coverage for more than 4 million people, just for some perspective. (By the way, if the law goes down, Medicaid expansion goes with it.)

The taxes involved are mostly on high earners in their Medicare taxes. The ACA has a a 0.9% tax on earnings over $250,000 for couples ($200,000 for single filers), with the revenue going to the Medicare Trust Fund. So the repeal would also destabilize Medicare, which is a side bonus for Republicans. The law imposed a larger, 3.8% tax on unearned income (capital gains, dividends, taxable interest, and royalties) for couples with incomes over $250,000 ($200,000 for single filers). The loss of various other revenue generators in the law—a $2.8 billion annual fee on pharmaceutical companies, limits on contributions to medical Flexible Spending Accounts, and the ACA employer mandate requiring large employers to provide health care to workers—all contribute to the overall losses. Continue reading.

Republican Leaders Want to End Obamacare. Their Voters Are Expanding It.

New York Times logoOklahoma is the latest state where voters, in choosing to expand Medicaid, have delivered a rebuke to their elected officials.

Deeply conservative Oklahoma narrowly approved a ballot initiative Tuesday to expand Medicaid to nearly 200,000 low-income adults, the first state to do so in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The vote to expand the Affordable Care Act’s reach once again put voters, many of them conservative, at odds with Republican leaders, who have worked to block it or invalidate it. Five states — Maine, Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, and now Oklahoma — have used ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid after their Republican governors refused to do so.

Oklahoma pushed the G.O.P. over a notable threshold: Most congressional Republicans now represent Medicaid-expansion states. The vote also came at a striking moment, less than a week after the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn the entirety of Obamacare — including Medicaid expansion. Continue reading.

Bottomless Pinocchio: Trump’s claim that he will ‘always’ protect those with preexisting conditions

Washington Post logoNow that the very expensive, unpopular and unfair Individual Mandate provision has been terminated by us, many States & the U.S. are asking the Supreme Court that Obamacare itself be terminated so that it can be replaced with a FAR BETTER AND MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE ALTERNATIVE….. Obamacare is a joke! Deductible is far too high and the overall cost is ridiculous. My Administration has gone out of its way to manage OC much better than previous, but it is still no good. I will ALWAYS PROTECT PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS,ALWAYS!!!”

— President Trump, in a pair of tweets, June 27, 2020

Just as the number of weekly coronavirus cases reached a new high in the United States, the Trump administration filed a legal brief asking the Supreme Court to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act.

About 20 million people covered through the act could lose their health insurance if Trump succeeds, among many other consequences bearing directly on the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Key provisions of the health-care law prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people who are already sick, or who have “preexisting conditions.” Continue reading.