Tag: Affordable Care Act

The Daily 202: Trump’s legal argument for throwing out all of the ACA is a nightmare for Senate Republicans

Washington Post logoPresident Trump insists on the campaign trail that he wants to protect insurance coverage for people with preexisting conditions. His legal team just told the Supreme Court otherwise.

The 82-page brief submitted late Thursday night by Trump’s representatives states crisply that the president wants to get rid of every provision of the Affordable Care Act.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco packs in a string of rhetorical flourishes that may draw cheers at a Federalist Society legal conference but will inevitably appear as factual citations to back up attack ads that Democrats plan to run this fall against vulnerable Senate Republicans, in a redux of the messaging that proved so potent in the 2018 midterms. Continue reading.

Trump administration calls for Supreme Court to strike down ObamaCare

The Hill logoThe Trump administration on Thursday night argued in a legal brief filed to the Supreme Court that the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) should be invalidated.

The legal filing, while expected, makes official the Trump administration’s position in the Supreme Court against the health care law months ahead of the election, at a time when Democrats are hammering President Trump over his position on health care.  

Overturning the ACA would take away health insurance coverage for about 20 million people, and the stakes are even higher given the effects of the current pandemic. Continue reading.

Trump to Supreme Court: Take Away Health Care From 337,000 Minnesotans During A Pandemic

DFL Party slams Trump legal brief urging the Supreme Court to end the A.C.A.

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Late last night, President Trump’s administration filed a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the midst of a pandemic.

According to newly-released numbers from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a public policy think tank, 337,000 Minnesotans would lose their health insurance if Trump succeeds in eliminating the ACA.

Nationwide, CAP projected that 23,259,000 Americans will lose their health insurance if the ACA is struck down – 3,382,000 of whom would lose health insurance specifically due to the loss of jobs and employer-sponsored insurance as a result of COVID-19 and Trump’s failure to manage the virus. CAP’s pre-pandemic numbers are in line with official estimates released by Trump’s own Department of Health and Human Services just last year. Continue reading “Trump to Supreme Court: Take Away Health Care From 337,000 Minnesotans During A Pandemic”

Health Care Advocates Push Back Against Trump’s Erasure of Transgender Rights

New York Times logoA new rule narrows the legal definition of sex discrimination in the Affordable Care Act. Major health care providers actively oppose it.

Health advocates representing American hospitals, medical groups, insurers and civil rights associations condemned the Trump administration on Saturday for rolling back protections for transgender patients, and for doing so amid a global pandemic.

The new rule, long sought by conservatives and the religious right, narrows the legal definition of sex discrimination in the Affordable Care Act so that it omits protection for transgender people. It also opens the door for health care providers to refuse to treat patients who have had abortions.

The move is part of a broad set of policy changes that weaken safeguards for transgender people across multiple sectors, including education, employment and housing. The changes to the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare, were proposed last year. Continue reading.

Study links Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare to fewer cancer deaths

The Hill logoA new study released this week showed that cancer deaths dropped more in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) than in those that did not.

The study from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) found that states that expanded Medicaid saw a 29 percent drop in cancer deaths, compared to a 25 percent drop for states that did not.

“This is the first study to show the benefit of Medicaid expansion on cancer death rates on a national scale,” said Anna Lee, who is the lead author and radiation oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York. “We now have evidence that Medicaid expansion has saved the lives of many people with cancer across the United States.” Continue reading.

Trump’s judicial nominee clashes with Democrats over his comments critical of health care law

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s nominee to the most influential federal appeals court clashed with Democrats over his past comments about the Affordable Care Act, while Republicans praised his recent ruling allowing limited Easter church services during the coronavirus pandemic.

Judge Justin Walker, a protege of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, faced criticism at Wednesday’s confirmation hearing over his remarks two years ago that rulings upholding the ACA were “indefensible” and about jokes he made at the law’s expense at a ceremony in March marking his entry to the federal bench.

Republicans are pushing to elevate Walker to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — a promotion that Democrats decry as too quick for the 37-year-old after just six months as a district judge in Kentucky. Continue reading.

Trump Aims To ’Terminate’ Obamacare In Midst Of Pandemic

Donald Trump on Wednesday said he still supports a Republican-led lawsuit before the Supreme Court that seeks to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 1.2 million Americans have tested positive for the virus, and nearly 72,000 have died from it, according to a tally from the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, more than 30 million people have lost their jobs, and with that, they may have lost their employer-sponsored health care. Without the ACA — better known as Obamacare — it’s unclear how those Americans would secure health insurance to pay for the cost of medical care or hospitalization if they contracted the coronavirus. Continue reading.

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.