Nearly every U.S. resident would be impacted in some way if the Trump administration gets its way and the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) is invalidated in court.
Susan Lyon of California, for example, is deeply concerned for her husband and business partner who has Parkinson’s disease. Without the ACA, she suspects her insurance would charge a lot more because of her husband’s pre-existing condition. She purchases health insurance through the ACA’s Small Business Healt...
obamacare
Trump’s attack on Obamacare shows he’s not learning as president
Donald Trump should be celebrating, after the Department of Justice said March 24 special counsel Robert Mueller’s report found the president didn’t collude with Russia in the 2016 US election. Instead he’s trying, yet again, to destroy “Obamacare,” ...
Remember when Republicans vowed to be the party to protect pre-existing condition coverage?
After the president and Republicans repeatedly promised to protect people with pre-existing conditions, the Trump administration on Monday evening said it supports a federal judge’s ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is unconstitutional, adding that it will seek to repeal the sweeping health care law in its entirety.
The Justice Department filed a brief letter in the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit telling the court that it agrees with Judge Reed O’C...
BREAKING: Bill Barr’s Justice Department just gave the middle finger to the rule of law
Last December, a Republican judge named Reed O’Connor handed down an opinion purporting to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act. The case, Texas v. United States, was brought by several Republican officials who manipulated the process used to assign judges to cases in order to get this case into O’Connor’s courtroom.
O’Connor, a former Republican Capitol Hill staffer, has a history of striking down policies supported by Democrats on highly dubi...
States legislatures shore up Obamacare with 2020 prospects uncertain
While the Democratic Party determines where it wants to go next on health care — whether it’s Medicare for All, Medicare for America, or any one of the other 2020 health proposals — state lawmakers are shoring up the party’s signature policy, the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
So far in 2019, state legislatures in Colorado, Maine, Maryland, and New Mexico are moving bills to bolster the 2010 health law, like securing consumer protections for people with pre-exist...
Red states try everything but straightforward Medicaid expansion — and the latest is Oklahoma
Red states that opposed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) during Barack Obama’s presidency are more likely to implement the 2010 law now, under Donald Trump, albeit with limitations — and Oklahoma is a fine example of this phenomenon.
To the surprise of Obamacare wonks, Oklahoma lawmakers in a key committee passed a Medicaid expansion bill this week — sort of. The bill directs the Oklahoma Health Care Authority to create a “Oklahoma Plan” within the state&#...
Trump’s rollback of the birth control mandate is blocked nationwide
Cost-free contraception for thousands is safe, after Pennsylvania District Judge Wendy Beetlestone temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s rollback of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) birth control mandate on Monday, issuing a nationwide injunction.
The administration aims to allow virtually all employers (including universities and colleges, by way of student health plans) the right to refuse to cover employees’ birth control by citing religious or moral obj...
A eulogy for the most incompetent House majority in modern history
Long before Donald Trump’s second-place finish somehow landed him in the White House, Republicans in Congress promised a package of benefit cuts, privatization, and tax cuts for the wealthy that were so cruel, American voters literally refused to believe they were real. In 2012, a Democratic super PAC decided not to campaign against future Speaker Paul Ryan’s package of Medicare vouchers and upper income tax cuts after participants in a focus group “simply refused to beli...
Anti-Obamacare lawyer tries to defend his court victory, winds up undercutting his own case
Late last week, Judge Reed O’Connor, a former Republican Senate staffer with a history of poorly reasoned opinions striking down Democratic policies, struck down the entire Affordable Care Act. On Wednesday, one of the lawyers behind this suit attempted to defend O’Connor’s opinion. It did not go well.
The political-operative-turned-judge’s opinion is widely viewed as indefensible, even by many of O’Connor’s fellow Obamacare haters. The Wall Stree...
There’s no GOP backup plan for the anti-Obamacare lawsuit
Now that a federal judge in Texas has handed down an order striking down the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s individual mandate — and, with it, all 900-plus pages of the health law — what happens next?
That’s the question facing Republican lawmakers whose colleagues are party to the lawsuit, which was filed by 20 GOP-led states.
The lawsuit aims to strike down very popular provisions of the ACA, including but not limited to protections for pre-existing con...