A U.S. appeals court has ruled that the ACA's individual mandate is unconstitutional, but is sending the case back to the district court for an analysis of how much of the rest of the ACA should be thrown out. Pre-existing condition protections would seem particularly at risk.
The district court judge who is getting the ACA case back from the appeals court for further analysis is the same judge who ruled that the entire ACA should be thrown out.
President Trump is backing the lawsuit to throw out the ACA, which is now unlikely to be decided by November 2020. So this election may once again be a referendum on the future of the ACA.
A Supreme Court decision on the ACA is likely to come after the 2020 election, which means whoever is in the White House in 2021 will have to deal with the potential fallout. This has to be a question in the next Democratic presidential debate, right?
Almost ten years after its passage, the ACA is embedded in our health care system. If it's ultimately thrown out by the courts, nearly everyone would be affected in one way or another.
kff.org/health-reform/…
kff.org/health-reform/…
A Supreme Court decision throwing out the ACA in the middle of the 2020 campaign would have been a political earthquake. That’s now unlikely given the timing of the case. But, it leaves the future of the ACA hanging in the balance in the election.
It’s remarkable that almost a decade after its passage, we’re still litigating, legally and politically, whether the ACA should exist at all.
If the courts invalidate the ACA’s individual mandate, it’s not a big deal since the penalty has been set to zero. If they rule other parts of the law, like pre-existing condition protections, are linked to the mandate and should be thrown out as well, that’s a very big deal.
Next for the ACA case is a judge deciding what parts, if any, should be thrown out with the individual mandate.
The Trump administration's initial position was that *only* pre-existing condition protections should be invalidated, then later saying that the whole law should go.
The Trump administration's initial position was that *only* pre-existing condition protections should be invalidated, then later saying that the whole law should go.
