In an op-ed for the New York Times, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Andy Slavitt, and Nicholas Bagley explain how President Trump will be to blame if the new Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act. With Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, extra benefits for people with Medicare very well might fall away as might the guaranteed right to health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions.
President Trump is supporting a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. His Supreme Court nominee easily could be the deciding vote eliminating the law. If overturned, nearly 15 million people who have Medicaid as a result of the ACA’s expansion of the Medicaid income limit would lose it. And, more than 11 million people who have coverage through the state health insurance exchanges would lose that. People with Medicare Part D would have to spend a lot more for their prescription drugs.
All Americans with health insurance would lose the guarantee of preventive care services with no deductible or copay, a protection in the ACA. They would also lose the guarantee of no lifetime limits on their coverage. And, children would not be able to get coverage through their parents’ policies until the age of 26.
The Supreme Court case challenging the ACA is based on the nonsensical claim that because people can no longer pay a penalty as an alternative to buying health insurance–a federal appeals court struck down the penalty provision in the law–the law forces people to buy health insurance, which is unconstitutional. The plaintiffs claim that without a penalty on people who don’t buy health insurance, the language in the law that says people “shall” buy health insurance has no meaning. Of course, eliminating the penalty actually makes it less costly to decide to go without health insurance and was never meant to force people to buy health insurance.
Plaintiffs further claim that if one part of the law is unconstitutional, the whole law is unconstitutional. This is yet another ridiculous argument. But, President Trump stands behind it. In the meantime, he has made it harder for people to get and stay on Medicaid by requiring people to complete more paperwork.
Congress could fix the ACA. It could put a $1 financial penalty on people who don’t get health insurance. Or, it could eliminate the “shall” language from the law, so that it can’t be argued that people must buy health insurance. But, these fixes are only possible if the Democrats win control of the Senate and the presidency.
Here’s more from Just Care:
Leave a Reply