Bulletin: Dog Catches Bus. Appears Confused.

December 18th, 2018 by Tom Lynch

 

After Sen. John McCain’s dramatic “no” vote in July 2017 that kept the ACA alive, Newsweek found at least 70 Republican-led attempts to repeal, modify or otherwise curb the Affordable Care Act since its inception as law on March 23, 2010. All of those attempts failed. But what the Republican-controlled congress couldn’t do in 70 attempts over eight years, a single federal judge from Texas my have done with the stroke of his pen.

In February, a Texas-led coalition of 20 states sued the federal government to end the health care law in its entirety, arguing that after Congress in December 2017 gutted one of its major provisions, a financial penalty for not having health insurance known as the “individual mandate,” the rest of the law was unconstitutional. Last Friday, Fort Worth-based U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor sided with Texas, ruling that without the individual mandate the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.

In a not unprecedented, but certainly rare, move earlier in the year the justice Department had announced it would not defend the suit, prompting a counter-coalition of states, led by California, to step in to argue the case.

There will be appeals – first to the full District Court and, if that fails, to the Supreme Court. Until those appeals are exhausted, the law will remain in place. Judge O’Connor’s ruling stands a pretty good chance of being overturned by the higher courts. According to the Texas Tribune, Timothy Jost, an emeritus professor at Washington and Lee University who has studied Obamacare and its legal battles extensively, called Friday’s ruling “an ideological opinion” that is “unmoored in law.” Regardless, democrats, who retook the House last month by making the threat that republicans were set to throw the ACA’s pre-existing condition protections, as well as a number of other Obamacare provisions voters love, on the dust heap of history, are now even more ammo’d-up for 2020.

And what about those bus-catching republicans, who have, at least for the moment, been given the thing they’ve wanted most for the last eight years? Well, to put it as kindly as these circumstances allow, they appear to be clueless. Republican leaders, although having the last eight years to come up with one, have yet to advance even the tiniest plan for what to do if the ruling is upheld. About the most we can say for them is this:

They’re women and men,
who want to go back to 2010
and start the health care war all over again.

President Trump called it “a great ruling” and tweeted “Congress must pass a STRONG law that provides GREAT healthcare and protects pre-existing conditions. Mitch and Nancy, get it done!” Right.

As of this writing, however, Trump’s troops do not appear eager to follow their Commander in Chief as he, unarmed, storms the health care barricades. Meanwhile, all the ACA-haters seem to be able to do is gloat. This whole thing is getting better than kicking back on a Saturday afternoon with a bag of popcorn watching the adventures of the Keystone Cops.

Let us pray sanity prevails.

 

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