Audio of the hearing is being streamed live on The Washington Post’s homepage, and a team of journalists is reporting developments as they unfold.
The court is reviewing a decision that found part of the law, also known as Obamacare, unconstitutional. The case raises questions about the fate of health insurance for millions of Americans, including the popular provision on preexisting health problems.
The lawsuit was brought by Republican state officials and is backed by President Trump’s administration, which has prioritized abolishing the law. A decision is not expected from the court until the spring or summer of 2021.
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The absurdity of doing this during a raging pandemic defies comprehension. But there ya go.
As I read this, I see things that people reasonably object to in the ACA. But dismantle the whole thing?
If the court were to scrap the health care law, some 21 million Americans, including 788,000 Texans, could lose insurance, according to recent estimates by the Urban Institute, a D.C.-based think tank. More than 5 million Texans are already uninsured, the most in the nation.
If they spent half as much time on thinking about how to replace or improve the ACA as it stands as they do on trying to tear it down, we might have the most amazingly great health care plan in this country.
If SCOTUS overturns ACA, I wonder how many GOP voters will be gobsmacked when their premiums for covering pre-existing conditions quadruple. How many will say “That’s OK, that’s how a free market should work,” and how many will find a way to blame Obama and/or Biden?
Do you mean SCOTUS overturning ACA will be some sort of springboard toward single payer? Did you happen to see the news last week about the GOP (likely) retaining control of the Senate?
The ACA isn’t great, but it’s all we’ve got for the foreseeable future. The alternative is what we had pre-2009.
So from oral arguments today it seemed that both Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh were skeptical that Congress’s decision to end the individual mandate penalty was a desire to kill the entire law. Kavanaugh especially seemed to think this was a clear case of severability.
Well, that’s going to disappoint a few Republicans. (Lookin’ at you, Mitch.) And after they bought and paid for what they thought was a perfectly good Supreme Court, too! Somebody needs to get fired over this. Is there anyone left to get fired?
This surprises me. I had assumed they had delayed until after the election because they were afraid their decision would affect the election and damage their party. Oh well, live and learn.
That was always the interesting thing about Justice Kavanaugh. He was fairly moderate on the bench EXCEPT for executive power - which is what Trump probably found the most appealing.
The obvious answer is that governing is hard work. It’s lot easier to throw bombs from the outside than it is to actually work on the inside to improve people’s lives.
As P.J. O’Rourke said, “Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.”
I mean sure that is the easy excuse. The bottom line is that a healthy majority of people would LOVE to have universal care or some form of it. If the ACA gets struck down, it isn’t like it is a giant surprise and both parties should have been working together on something the entire time.
Bunch of lazy fat rich punks.
They do need to make sure that it is good enough to put all politicians on the plan as well.
The ACA is the most conservative plan that could cover everyone. If you want to cover everyone, and include insurance companies, you have to make it required that they cover everyone fairly. You want to encourage healthy people to sign up, so you make it a mandate (which was struck down), or at least provide subsidies for people who need it. You require companies (larger than some lower limit) to provide insurance, which is another way of getting people to sign up. You expand medicaid for people who don’t have jobs or are too poor to get insurance on their own.
That’s it. That’s the Affordable Care Act. Anything more than that would be SOCIALISM!!! Either single player (like Medicare or Canada) or single provider (like the VA or the UK).
The ACA was the most private-sector friendly, most conservative possible plan that would get everyone covered.
It’s been ten years since the ACA was passed and Republicans have told us over and over that they’re going to replace it with a great new plan. I look forward to seeing what that is and I expect to hear about it, perhaps right after we land someone on Mars.