The Trump Administration has laid out its arguments against the constitutionality of ObamaCare as it prepares an all-out assault in the courts that could bring a final Supreme Court ruling during the middle of election season next spring.
Filed with the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Assistant Attorney General Joseph Hunt unfurled the administration’s new position, which holds that the entirety of the law is unconstitutional. Previously, the administration had argued that some parts of the law could remain in effect, even if the individual mandate is struck down.
“Upon further consideration and review of the district court’s opinion, it is the position of the United States that the balance of the ACA also is inseverable and must be struck down” and that the fine on the uninsured “works part and parcel with the other health-insurance reforms in the ACA,” the administration wrote in the briefing.
The brief is, effectively, a bid to affirm a December decision by US District Judge Reed O’Connor that would have struck down the law if it weren’t for the inevitable appeals. The case is widely expected to go all the way to the Supreme Court, what would be ObamaCare’s second trip to the highest court in the nation.
In his ruling, O’Connor determined that when Congress struck down the individual mandate last year, it effectively nullified SCOTUS’s rationale for deeming the law constitutional in 2012. His decision sided with Republican state officials who had filed the challenge. The decision was swiftly appealed by Democratic attorneys general.
Last month, Trump tweeted that Republicans had been developing a “really great” alternative health care plan with “far lower premiums” than Obamacare and that a vote would take place right after the election.
I was never planning a vote prior to the 2020 Election on the wonderful HealthCare package that some very talented people are now developing for me & the Republican Party. It will be on full display during the Election as a much better & less expensive alternative to ObamaCare…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2019
According to the Washington Examiner, if all of Obamacare were declared unconstitutional, then other provisions in the healthcare law would be undone, like the expansion of Medicaid, cuts to drug prices in Medicaid, and a rule allowing adult children to remain on their parents’ plans until the age of 26.
Read the brief below:
DOJ Brief Texas v. US by on Scribd
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VDzrFU Tyler Durden