Not so interested in its merits here as in its political motivations and impacts.
Reads to me as desperate attempt to switch public focus from the clearly losing subjects of how he is handling the pandemic and police reform/BLM. His team has to understand that threatening insurance coverage of so many, especially at this moment, is a politically something more likely to have big downsides than upsides. The fact that they are doing it anyway can only mean that they see how much they need to get the conversation switched to something else, even something also bad for them but maybe a bit less bad?
Is there any other interpretation?
If the administration prevails it could result in a Biden landslide and an opportunity for a Biden administration to propose a more revolutionary plan. Wouldn’t that be a fun turn of events!
Well it worked for him the first time but yeah lets do this when were going to have possibly a half million sick people in the next 5-6 weeks… his wall just got shut down for a while hes lost almost everything hes put before the supreme court ,
HE’s just realized that if you piss off the washington pros like bolton et al they have no problem throwing you under a bus publicly
its not like real estate where they screw each other overall the time but no one says anything because hey if you complain your shady deals might get questioned …
I wouldn’t be surprised if they even declined to take the case because even with new judges this is what the 3 or 4th time they’ve in the court ?
Either there is no thought behind this and Trump just decided he wanted to do this, or the strategy is to lose spectacularly as a way to gin up support, or he thinks if he can get it repealed, the democrats will agree to whatever skinnycare bill the GOP wants as an alternative to letting millions go uninsured and tanking the healthcare sector of the economy.
I don’t actually think healthcare is a less-bad issue for Trump than coronavirus or the BLM protests. At least those other two issues are legitimately divisive and Trump has fervent supporters for his most extreme views. With healthcare of course many people still fervently believe that the ACA is too much government involvement/destroying individual liberty, but the GOP has completely lost momentum on the issue. If they were to actually get the entire law struck down they would be in much more hurt because you can’t lie to people about their own healthcare. They also have backed themselves into a corner because the most obvious voter group that would be willing to cross party lines to repeal the ACA is people who don’t have coverage but pay the tax - but they don’t even pay the tax anymore so they have no real incentive to back repealing the rest of it.
There’s maybe a chance if they lose in the SC in a dramatic fashion, the GOP could make the issue more about “freedom hating activist judges and RINOs won’t let us do what we want” and manage to make the controversy the focus as opposed to what the controversy is about.
I think the S.C. will keep the ACA alive so I’m not super worried about what happens after, but if they strike it down I really hope that the Dems don’t get scared and cave to some GOP bill that is Obamacare lite but with extra kickbacks to the healthcare industry. I think they can win by fighting on this issue and standing down would have disastrous consequences next time. If I were a democrat in congress, the day after a ruling against the ACA, I would put the original Obamacare bill on the table, except with 100% funding to the medicaid expansion, and I wouldn’t budge until the election.
Remember that the case the administration filed a brief in support of won’t be decided until after the election. So while the political implications of trying to overturn the ACA will be relevant to the November election the actual decision will not be.
I read it as just par for the course. They already signaled they were going to do this, the GOP base expects them to do this, so they tried to bury the filing late on a Thursday night hoping it wouldn’t get much play. I’ve seen more than one article where GOP operatives believe it’s pretty lousy politics, but we shall see.
I am honestly baffled by this point of view by people with no health insurance through their jobs or prior military service [or other means of getting health care other than medic-whatever] - all I can think is that they believe in the crap about death boards and microchipping/satanic marking shit that gets rumored around.
Personally? I think we should go to universal health care. They whinge about service rationing when they talk about England or Canada, but isn’t rationed care better than none at all? I mean Tri-Care technically ‘rations’ my health care, and have for years - I get a standard annual wellness check for women, one general like mrAru gets, and the ability to call and get an appointment for something that shows up [flu, allergy reaction like hives from poison ivy, general practitioner stuff, and the ability to go to an ER if I have something nasty accute happen - appendix, broken something] that everybody on tricare gets. I also get specialist care because of the diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer [effectively, I spent almost 2 years going pretty much weekly for 18 months, then every 6 weeks for a port flush, and every 3 months for oncology, and ever 3 months for a flexi-sigmoidoscopy and biopsy, and an annual colonoscopy, I get 2 CTs and 2 MRIs a year also. I am an experimental patient for not chopping out and rearranging my guts but I have to be monitored very closely.] I have no idea of the total for the cancer shuffle to date, but with the hospitalization for a week on top of everything else it has to already be over a quarter million. [I think to date my copays are running about $30K]
Trump’s attacks on the ACA probably won’t cost him many votes but they also won’t win any votes from probable Biden voters. It’s a really dumb tack for the GOP in general, just another issue where they are failing to see the nation’s changing mindset.
I don’t think they are even a little bit interested in the nation’s mindset, especially if they can ignore it and still get trump re-elected. After all, the 2016 “nation’s mindset” elected Hillary Clinton. Can’t let the “mindset” be heard from again. Both trump and McConnell have said it-- if access to voting were easy and open, “no Republican would ever get elected.” (Trump said that.)
I like to think it will cost him a few votes. In the middle of a health care crisis, attacking Obamacare is a bad idea. I think at least a few Republican voters aren’t seeing everything proposed by a “Republican” as a good idea these days, and won’t reflexively attack Obamacare because it was written by Democrats.
I am baffled by the ones that have health insurance through their jobs and somehow think they always will. Don’t they see the millions who lost their jobs due to COVID and have only expensive COBRA insurance (and that for only 18 months)? Do they delude themselves into thinking that their jobs will always be deemed essential and that their employer will always remain in operation?
I think people have entirely overlooked that Trump got rich going bankrupt! Nobody knows how to profit from failure like him and his crew. Jared started a ventilator co, much lauded at the time, mid crisis. But, in the end, a big huge bust. Does anyone believe they didn’t all profit off that, regardless? Isn’t it what he does? Schmooze investors, when it all crashes to the ground he’s off with all the money and they’re bankrupt! Isn’t that his MO?
Screws Covid response? Children in cages? Bankrupt Medicare? Bankrupts/defunds every gov program he dislikes? I bet he knows how to profit off of each crisis he creates, mishandles or exacerbates.
The court has already accepted the case. What Trump has done is join the Justice Dept to the case already brought to the court by attorneys general of several states. I believe that the appeals court has already struck down the law so if SCOTUS were to refuse to consider it, ACA would be dead in those jurisdictions. The court has not ruled on this one and they have said they will not this term. Which means they will wait till after the election to strike it down. There would be no reason to wait if they were going to uphold it, but it would clearly damage the Republican party if they struck it down. That Roberts is a wily one.
It is also possible that they don’t want to strike it down until it is ready to be replaced.
If it were struck down now, then millions lose their access to healthcare… in the middle of a pandemic.
If it is struck down after a blue wave ushers in solid majorities in both chambers, then SCOTUS can strike it down with the clear conscience that it will be replaced.
I have no idea if this actually factors into their reasoning, and may be giving them too much credit as to not being sociopaths.
It seems to me that Trump is going all in on red meat for his base, implicitly accepting that he’s lost everyone else so he needs maximal turnout of that upper 30% who love all of this shit. For that to work it needs to be coupled with depressing turnout of everyone else massively … be very sure that every possible dirty pool will be used to try to decrease turnout for Biden, from very ugly lies in negative ads, to troll farms, to explicit voter suppression.