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Insurers could once again deny people coverage based on their medical history, undoing the law’s most popular provisions.
The Trump administration argued in a court brief filed on Thursday that Obamacare’s protections for preexisting conditions should be ruled unconstitutional, opening up another front in the White House’s crusade to roll back the law’s core insurance reforms.
The brief was filed in a case brought by several conservative states, led by Texas, which argued that because Republicans in Congress repealed Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty in their tax bill, the mandate is now unconstitutional — and so is the rest of the law.
The lawsuit argued that without an actual monetary fine for not having health insurance, the mandate should be considered illegal under the rationale used by Chief Justice John Roberts to uphold the law in the famous 2012 lawsuit. Roberts had said that Congress could not order people to buy insurance, but that it could impose a tax penalty on them for not having insurance, which allowed the mandate and the rest of the law to stand and take effect. Without the financial penalty, repealed in the tax bill, the Republican-led states argued the requirement to buy insurance cannot legally stand. Because the mandate is so crucial to Obamacare, they argued, the whole law should be found unconstitutional too.
Usually, a presidential administration defends current law, but the Trump administration took a different tack, agreeing with the conservative states that the mandate and the law’s rules that prohibits insurers from denying people health insurance or charging them higher rates are unconstitutional. However, the Justice Department lawyers told the court that the rest of the law could stand, including the law’s massive expansion of Medicaid to millions of the nation’s poorest citizens.
If the Trump administration’s argument were to prevail, insurers could once again be able to flat-out deny Americans insurance based on their health status. No amount of federal subsidies would protect them. Medicaid expansion would remain, but the private insurance market would no longer guarantee coverage to every American.
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