US Supreme Court saves the ACA, for now
In a surprising move, a 7-2 Supreme Court threw out a Republican lawsuit hoping to overturn the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
Wow. Breaking news this morning. The US Supreme Court surprised everybody by throwing out a Republican-backed lawsuit attempting to strike down the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka Obamacare).
In a 7-2 decision, with GOP-appointed justices Gorsuch and Alito dissenting (yes, Clarence Thomas was with the majority!), the court held that the Republican plaintiffs had no standing to even file the case as they hadn’t been harmed by the ACA.
“Standing” is a legal concept, and requirement, whereby you can’t file a lawsuit unless you’re directly affected by the underlying matter. In this case, the Republicans were arguing that the ACA’s individual mandate — the provision of the law that says everyone has to get coverage, or else they’ll be hit with a penalty/fine — was a “harm” that the court could recognize for standing purposes.
But the court disagreed. The majority argued that because Republicans in Congress, with Trump’s help, already gutted the individual mandate by lowering the penalty for non-compliance to $0, there was in effect no penalty at all, and thus the plaintiffs didn’t have standing because they couldn’t show that they were harmed by the mandate.
In other words, the Republicans shot themselves in the foot on this one. And that’s great news for the 31 million Americans, like me, who get their health insurance via the ACA, but it’s also a victory for every American because EVERYONE benefits from the ACA. Protections for people with pre-existing conditions apply to everyone, not just those with ACA insurance. Outlawing annual and lifetime limits on insurance coverage applies to everyone. All women get free mammograms because of the ACA. And kids up until the age of 26 can be on their parents’ policy — why, because of the ACA.
People often forget that there are lots of protections in the Affordable Care Act that apply to every single American, and not just those who get their insurance via the ACA.
On seeing the breaking news at 10am Eastern Time this morning, I got on the phone with ACA expert Charles Gaba, and booked him for our podcast this morning. We just finished the interview, you can hear it here. (Charles has also written more on today’s decision here.)
That’s it for today. I wanted to make this a quick one, so you could get the important news now. Tomorrow I’ll have another update, and then Saturday will the Week in the News overview of the week.
See you all tomorrow. JOHN