Trump Supports Another Attempt at Rolling Back Obamacare

On Thursday, President Donald Trump supported a case calling Obamacare’s protections for pre-existing conditions unconstitutional.

A group of conservative states filed a case calling for certain Obamacare provisions to be deemed unconstitutional and, in turn, removed. With Obamacare, health insurance companies cannot deny coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions, and they cannot charge sick people higher premiums.

But the conservative states, fronted by Texas, argue that, since there isn’t a financial penalty for not having insurance, it can no longer be considered a requirement to have insurance. And since said policy is such an important and integral part of Obamacare, the Republican states have mentioned that the whole law should be dismissed. The lawsuit was filed by attorneys from twenty different states in late February.

This is yet another attempt to dismiss Obamacare. Experts have been skeptical that this one will be successful. Commenting on the lawsuit, Georgetown professor Katie Keith stated: “The lawsuit points back at Congress, saying, ‘Congress would have never crafted a law without the mandate in the first place. It completely ignores the fact that Congress just did exactly that. Ruling in favor of this suit would be thwarting the will of Congress, which said they’re okay losing the mandate penalty.”

Trump has fully supported the conservative states’ case. The Justice Department lawyers had a different approach, stating that the rest of the law can still remain—including plans for the expansion of its availability to low-income citizens.

With this set of propositions, the laws that prohibited public insurance companies from denying services to customers would also be dropped. This has created major concerns for citizens, since this would give insurers the ability to decide whether or not they want to give insurance to someone based on their health status or condition. Many Americans would be left unprotected.

However, despite the major support this case has received, it is far from passing as legislation. Most scholars believe that the Supreme Court will not consider these propositions since they have previously defended Obamacare against other lawsuits and general criticism. The procedure could also backfire for Republicans, since protections against pre-existing conditions (as well as general health care) has been a popular legislation among Americans and removing them could end up hurting their campaigns for this year’s elections. This would be particularly inconvenient, because Democrat politicians have already stated that they will choose health care as the major theme of their campaigns.

Obamacare insurance providers are also unconvinced that this case will follow through; they have already begun setting insurance rates for next year. Some of them are already raising their premium services by at least thirty percent, probably due to the uncertain climate around their regulations.

It is also believed that several federal lawyers pulled out of the case after it was filed, indicating that they were not confident of the Trump administration’s arguments. University of Michigan professor Nicholas Bagley told Vox that “You take your name off a brief because you believe the arguments being made are not good-faith arguments.”

Featured Image via: Flickr/Will O’ Neil