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"If the Supreme Court rules that Obamacare is out, we'll have a plan that is far better than Obamacare," Trump says in the Oval Office. (He didn't elaborate.)
Five justices who have upheld Obamacare twice — Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan — remain on the Supreme Court.
It's not clear the Texas v. US case seeking to invalidate the ACA will get to the Supreme Court, but if it does there's a good chance it'll be decided in the spring or summer 2020, the heat of election season.
The brightest conservative minds have tried for 9 years and failed to devise an ACA replacement that's viable and not politically toxic. Why would now be different?
Republican lawmakers and operatives would love to never talk about preexisting conditions again and instead watch Democrats battle among themselves over Medicare for all. But the president just made that a lot harder.
The ACA replacement debate is déjà vu, yet again. The fact is nobody's figured out a way chop ACA subsidies and regulations (i.e. the stuff conservatives dislike) without also axing popular consumer protections and reducing coverage.
Whether or not that should be done is a fair policy debate to have (and will likely continue for a while). But as we saw in 2017, it's a politically treacherous endeavor.
