U.S. Supreme Court rejects Trump-backed challenge to Obamacare

WASHINGTON, June 17 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a Republican offer to repeal Obamacare, backed by former President Donald Trump’s administration, and upheld the groundbreaking health bill for the third time since it was passed in 2010.

The 7-2 ruling stated that Texas and other challengers had no legal authority to file their lawsuit for the annulment of a law officially known as the Affordable Care Act, which has allowed millions of Americans to take medical care through either public programs or private insurers To receive care. The decision was drafted by the liberal judge Stephen Breyer.

The judges did not rule on any further legal issues raised in the case, whether an important Obamacare provision was unconstitutional and, if so, whether the rest of the law should be repealed. The provision, known as the “Individual Mandate”, originally required Americans to take out health insurance or pay a fine.

“Today’s decision by the US Supreme Court is a great victory for all Americans who will benefit from this groundbreaking and life-changing bill,” said Democratic President Joe Biden, whose administration opposed the lawsuit.

Now that three major challenges for Obamacare have been resolved by the judges, Biden added, “It is time to move forward and continue to build on this landmark law.” Biden also encouraged more Americans to use Obamacare for coverage.

Poll data has shown Obamacare is growing in popularity with Americans, including Republicans.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who led the challenge, vowed to continue fighting Obamacare. The individual mandate, Paxton wrote on Twitter, “was unconstitutional when it was passed and is still unconstitutional.”

The bill was the preeminent domestic achievement of former Democratic President Barack Obama, with whom Biden worked as Vice President.

“This ruling confirms what we have long known to be true: the Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” said Obama.

Breyer wrote that none of the challengers, including Texas and 17 other states as well as the individual plaintiffs, could prove a single mandate violation, in part because a tax bill signed by Trump in 2017 with Republican support had overturned the fine.

“Unsurprisingly, states have failed to demonstrate that an unenforceable mandate will induce residents to enroll in valuable benefit programs that they would otherwise forego,” wrote Breyer.

The US Supreme Court building in Washington, USA, May 17, 2021. REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst / File Photo

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Twenty states, including Democratic-ruled California and New York, and the Democratic-run House of Representatives intervened in the case to try to get Obamacare after Trump refused to defend the law.

Conservative justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch contradicted the verdict. Alito called the decision an example of “judicial inventiveness” and described the individual mandate as “clearly unconstitutional”.

Republicans fiercely opposed Obamacare when it was proposed, failed to overturn it when they controlled both houses of Congress, and failed to get courts to overturn the law, including the 2012 and Supreme Court rulings 2015.

Biden’s administration asked the Supreme Court to uphold Obamacare in February, reversing the position of the administration under Trump, who stepped down in January.

Trump-appointed Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whose 2020 confirmatory hearing included questions from Democrats as to whether she would vote to overturn Obamacare, joined the majority in the verdict.

“INDEPENDENT EFFORTS”

Had Obamacare been crushed, up to 20 million Americans could have lost health insurance and insurers could again have refused to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Obamacare expanded the state health program Medicaid and created marketplaces for private insurance companies.

House spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, called the ruling a “victory for the work of Democrats to protect people with pre-existing illnesses against Republicans’ relentless efforts to destroy them.”

Biden has pledged to expand access to health care and strengthen Obamacare. He and other Democrats had criticized Republicans’ efforts against Obamacare at a time when the United States was grappling with a deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the Supreme Court’s Conservative majority of 6-3, Obamacare’s Republican challengers were disappointed with a verdict in which all three Liberal judges joined four of the six Conservative judges. Opposition to Obamacare appears to have receded as a political issue for many Republicans as their party emphasized other issues such as immigration, election restrictions and hot “culture war issues”.

The Supreme Court previously upheld Obamacare, holding the individual mandate fine for a tax allowed under the language of the US Constitution, which gives Congress the power to collect taxes. The abolition of the penalty in 2017 meant that the individual mandate could no longer be interpreted as a tax regulation and was therefore illegal, argued the Republican challengers.

A federal judge in Texas ruled in 2018 that Obamacare was structurally unconstitutional following the 2017 amendment and was invalid in its entirety. The 5th US Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, agreed that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, but did not rule that the entire law should be deleted.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Adaptation by Will Dunham

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