President Donald Trump’s administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the Obamacare law introduced by his predecessor that added millions to the healthcare safety net but has been a major political controversy.
Government advocate Noel Francisco argued in a filing late on Thursday that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – one of former President Barack Obama’s signature achievements – became invalid after the previous, Republican-led Congress axed parts of it.
“Nothing the 2017 Congress did demonstrates it would have intended the rest of the ACA to continue to operate in the absence of these three integral provisions,” said Francisco, who leads the Justice Department’s Office of the Solicitor General.
“No further analysis is necessary; once the individual mandate and the guaranteed-issue and community-rating provisions are invalidated, the remainder of the ACA cannot survive.”
The legal push is sure to be an important political battleground in the presidential election, where Trump is seeking re-election against the challenge of Democratic candidate Joe Biden in a November vote.
“President Trump and the Republicans’ campaign to rip away the protections and benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty,” said Democratic House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“If President Trump gets his way, 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions will lose the ACA’s lifesaving protections and 23 million Americans will lose their health coverage entirely. There is no legal justification and no moral excuse for the Trump Administration’s disastrous efforts to take away Americans’ health care.”
Source:(Reuters)
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