“Nightmare Scenario”: ACA “May Be Doomed” As GOP Plows Ahead With Lawsuit To Gut Pre-Existing Conditions Protections

One Week After Election Day, SCOTUS Will Hear Oral Arguments in Senate Republican-Backed Lawsuit to Overturn Affordable Care Act

As Senate Republicans prepare to rush through an election-year lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court in a stunning reversal from 2016, the Affordable Care Act and its coverage protections for people with pre-existing conditions “may be doomed” as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in the GOP lawsuit to overturn the health care law exactly one week after Election Day. Senate Republican incumbents and candidates either support or refuse to oppose this lawsuit, and they are on the record in favor of gutting these core health care protections.

“Make no mistake — coverage protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions are on the line as Republicans plow forward with their deeply unpopular lawsuit to overturn the entire health care law,” said DSCC spokesperson Helen Kalla. “Senate Republicans are desperately trying to convince voters they’d protect pre-existing conditions coverage while enabling their party’s lawsuit to rip those protections away and preparing to ram through a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Americans can’t count on Senate Republicans to protect their health care.”

Read more about how the fate of health care for tens of millions hangs in the balance:

Washington Post: How Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death could jeopardize the Affordable Care Act

• The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg injects fresh uncertainty into the future of the Affordable Care Act, as the Supreme Court prepares to consider anew the constitutionality of the law that has reshaped the United States’ health-care system in the past decade.

• “Ginsburg’s death is the nightmare scenario for the Affordable Care Act,” said Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor who supports the law. “If the suit had a trivial chance of success yesterday, it has a new lease on life.”

• The ACA has been in peril in the courts and from President Trump and congressional Republicans since it was adopted by a Democratic president in 2010, becoming Barack Obama’s main domestic policy achievement. The newest legal challenge comes as polls were showing health care was a dominant issue in the November elections, even before the coronavirus pandemic removed millions of Americans’ jobs and health insurance and elevated people’s worries about whether they would have coverage if they got sick.

• On Saturday, scholars said they regarded the law’s survival chances as dampened with Ginsburg’s death. Assuming the court’s remaining three liberals vote to uphold it, they now would need to find two justices to join them — one more than if the late justice were alive to participate, said Timothy S. Jost, a retired law professor at Washington and Lee University.

Washington Post: The Health 202: Obamacare’s chances of surviving Supreme Court diminished with RBG’s death

• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death is not-so-great news for Obamacare.

• Legal scholars tell me the long-embattled health-care law’s prospects for surviving yet another Supreme Court hearing, scheduled for one week after the election, are far less certain now that the court has lost one of its four liberal justices.

• Tens of millions of Americans would lose coverage through Medicaid and subsidized marketplaces and many more would lose the law’s consumer protections, including a ban on discriminating against those with preexisting medical conditions. Passed in 2010, the law’s main components have been in place for six years and are now entrenched within the U.S. health-care system.

• With just 50 days until oral arguments, the Senate – even aside from the political debate on filling a vacancy just before Election Day – might not have enough time to replace her. So the arguments could be heard by an eight-person court, raising the possibility of a tie on the matter. But with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowing to move swiftly, it’s not inconceivable that the court could include a third Trump appointee by Nov. 10.

NBC News: Obamacare may be doomed if 8-member Supreme Court presses ahead with fall cases

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, ending one of the most remarkable careers in American legal history, leaves the Supreme Court under a cloud of uncertainty as it prepares to begin its new term in two weeks, with questions about who will put her successor on the court, when will that happen and how will it affect some of the major cases on the docket — including the fate of Obamacare.

• The week after the November general election, the court will consider the future of the Affordable Care Act, which a coalition of red states are hoping to strike down — including the provision requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.

• If [Chief Justice John] Roberts, who has voted in the past to uphold the law, sided with the liberals this time, that 4-4 tie would leave the lower court ruling in place, which declared the law invalid.

Axios: If Trump replaces Ginsburg, the ACA really is at risk

• The Supreme Court vacancy created by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death leaves the Affordable Care Act in much greater jeopardy than it was just a few days ago.

• The big picture: Conventional wisdom had held that Chief Justice John Roberts would likely join with the court’s liberals to save the ACA once again. But if President Trump is able to fill Ginsburg’s former seat, Roberts’ vote alone wouldn’t be enough to do the trick, and the law — or big sections of it — is more likely to be struck down.

• Health care is already becoming a centerpiece of Democratic messaging on the court vacancy — including Joe Biden’s campaign — and with good reason. When they say the survival of the ACA is at stake in this nomination process, they’re right.

• The bottom line: A lawsuit that once seemed like a long shot now has a much more reasonable chance at success — and that means 20 million people’s health coverage really could be in the balance.

LA Times: Analysis: RBG successor may push to end abortion, Obamacare

• The death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could allow legal conservatives to take full control of the Supreme Court for a decade or more, imposing a historic shift to the right with vast implications for U.S. jurisprudence and society at large.

• A conservative court could use its majority to overturn Roe vs. Wade, which guarantees a woman’s right to abortion, and strike down Obamacare and its promise of health insurance for millions, including those with preexisting conditions.

• Ginsburg’s death has also raised new doubts about the future of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, the most far-reaching social legislation in a generation. The high court’s conservatives fell one vote short in 2012 of striking down the law.

BuzzFeed: Obamacare Is In Danger After Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Death

• The fight to replace the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court could determine whether Obamacare is repealed next year, potentially stripping tens of millions of people of their health insurance during a global pandemic.

• After Republicans in Congress failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017, 20 red state attorneys general led by Texas launched a lawsuit to have the law overturned by the courts. The case is scheduled to go before the Supreme Court for oral arguments on November 10, one week after the election. A decision could come in the first half of 2021.

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said he will put forward a Trump nominee to replace Ginsburg on the court. If Republicans are successful, the ACA’s fate could be decided by a majority made up of three Trump appointees — with Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch already on the bench — plus Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who make up the rightmost flank of the court.

• Repealing Obamacare would remove the ban on denying or jacking up prices for health insurance to people with pre-existing health conditions. It would repeal the Medicaid expansion, which provides health insurance to millions of low-income Americans. Other provisions that would be eliminated include letting children stay on their parents’ insurance plans until the age of 26, caps on out-of-pocket cost sharings, a ban on annual or lifetime limits on what an insurance plan can pay out, and a list of benefits that all regulated plans must cover. This would also take place during a global health pandemic.

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