Obamacare Faces New Supreme Court Challenge

Obamacare’s financial penalty saved it at the Supreme Court. The majority identified this penalty as a tax. Obamacare continued. The financial penalty was eventually dropped. The Supreme Court’s justification for keeping this law is gone. A group of red states has brought this challenge back to the Supreme Court. The Trump Administration joined them.

From Fox News:

The case, California v. Texas, is brought by a group of red states arguing that because Congress eliminated the financial penalty associated with the individual mandate – the provision in the ACA that requires all Americans to purchase health insurance it is no longer a valid exercise of the government’s power to tax and therefore is unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court reading the mandate as a tax is what saved the law during a previous challenge, enraging conservatives who thought the Republican-appointed majority on the court would strike down the ACA.

The red states further argue that the individual mandate is not “severable” from the rest of the law, meaning it was so instrumental to Congress’ plan when it originally passed the legislation that the rest of the law also needs to be declared invalid if the Supreme Court rules the individual mandate is unconstitutional. The Trump administration in its brief supported that position.

“The individual mandate cannot be severed from the remainder of the ACA. Congressional findings incorporated into the ACA’s text clearly indicate that Congress would not have adopted the guaranteed-issue and community-rating provisions absent the individual mandate’s requirement to purchase insurance,” the Trump administration argues.

It continues: “This Court recognized the interrelatedness of these three provisions in [two other cases]. And Congress’s 2017 amendment does not alter the severability analysis because it left intact the critical statutory findings about the interconnectedness of these provisions – findings that were and remain the functional equivalent of an inseverability clause.”

Fox News has more information, including the Trump Administration’s brief,  here. Bloomberg also covers this topic if you want to see the propaganda version of the linked article.

Category: Politics