In a late-night presentation, Attorney General Noel Francisco said that once the law’s individual coverage mandate and two key provisions are invalidated, “the rest of the ACA should not be allowed to remain in place.”
The judges He will hear arguments about the case sometime in the next period, although it is unclear if they will occur before the November elections.
The dispute ensures another major change in the political landscape during election season on an issue that has dominated American politics for the past decade. It will be the third time that the court has heard a major challenge to the law. The case pits a coalition of California-led Democratic attorneys general and the House of Representatives, who uphold the law, against the Trump administration and a group of Texas-led red state attorneys general.
The question is whether the individual mandate of the law became unconstitutional because Congress reduced the fine for remaining uninsured to zero and, if so, whether that would bring down the entire law. In December, a federal appeals court ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional, but punished the decision on which, if any, the provisions of the law could be retained in the district court, which had previously ruled that the entire law was invalid.
The administration generally sided with Republican attorneys general, but recently argued that the entire law should fall, but that the ruling should only apply to the 18 states that challenged it.
In Thursday’s presentation, Francisco emphasized: “Nothing that the 2017 Congress did demonstrates that it had intended that the rest of the ACA continue to operate in the absence of these three comprehensive provisions.”
He said that “the entire ACA, therefore, must comply with the individual mandate, although the scope of the reparations entered in this case must be limited to the provisions that have been shown to harm the plaintiffs.”
Early Thursday, Joe Biden, the alleged Democratic presidential candidate, lashed out at President Donald Trump for continuing to support the violation of the law.
“Today, his Administration is filing a report with the Supreme Court to strip health care coverage from 23 million Americans, including 224,000 Wisconsin residents,” Biden said, commenting on Trump’s visit to Badger State on Thursday. “All Americans deserve the peace of mind (with) access to affordable, high-quality health care.”
Biden, who plans to make a new healthcare effort to protect the Affordable Care Act this week, was vice president when former President Barack Obama signed the bill in 2010. He asks to strengthen it by making federal premium subsidies be more generous and allow more people to qualify for subsidies. It would also add a government-run public option and lower the age of Medicare eligibility to 60.
Meanwhile, Priorities USA, a pro Biden super PAC, is releasing a television ad titled “Healthcare Failures,” highlighting Trump’s continued effort to undermine Obamacare and to run in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Additionally, it is launching a digital ad titled “Pull the Plug,” which emphasizes that 133 million Americans with pre-existing conditions could lose protections and their costs could increase if the Trump Supreme Court challenge is successful.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra defended the law at a campaign event for Biden on Wednesday, saying it allowed millions of Americans to get coverage, particularly African-Americans, Latinos and Asians.
“The ACA has changed lives and now through this pandemic, we can all see the value of having greater access to quality health care at affordable prices,” he said, noting that black Americans have four times more chances of being hospitalized with coronavirus. . “Now is not the time to start our best tool to address the very real and very deadly health disparities in our communities.”
About 11.4 million people signed up for Obamacare 2020 policies on the exchanges, while nearly 12.7 million low-income adults have obtained coverage through the Medicaid expansion. It allows young adults up to the age of 26 to comply with their parents’ policies and prohibits insurers from denying coverage to those who buy their own policies or from charging more due to pre-existing conditions. And it allows many people to get free birth control, yearly physicals, mammograms, and cholesterol tests.
It affects almost all Americans, many of whom are unaware of the impact of the law.
The submissions come a day after Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced a bill to improve the landmark law. Similar to Biden’s plan, it would make Obamacare’s policies more affordable by tightening federal premium subsidies, limiting monthly premiums to 8.5% of affiliate income, and allowing more middle-class Americans to receive subsidies by eliminating the income limit of four times the poverty level. It also tries to attract more states to expand Medicaid to low-income adults by covering 100% of the cost for the first three years.
And it would reverse various moves made by the Trump administration to weaken the law, including restoring marketing funds and enrollment assistance during Obamacare’s annual enrollment period.
The House measure, led by President Nancy Pelosi, seeks to make a sharp contrast between the parties on health care, an issue that has become even more pressing in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It was wrong at any time,” the California Democrat said of the administration’s stance. “Now, it’s more than stupid.”
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