Breaking overnight, the Trump Administration has asked the Supreme Court to put an end to the Affordable Care Act. His decision to appeal to the highest court in the United States comes as the death count stemming from the nation’s deadliest health outbreak in modern history continues to rise.
The New York Times reports that overturning the ACA, commonly referred to as “Obamacare,” could mean as many as 23 million Americans would be left without medical coverage. This, as the plan continues to see increasing numbers of enrollment. A report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that nearly 500,000 people signed up for the ACA after the coronavirus-spurred economic turndown that continues to leave millions of Americans out of work.
The administration has justified their decision to join Republican officials in 18 states urging for the end of the ACA, by agreeing that the ACA, as it stands, is invalid given that one of three parts to the act was rendered unconstitutional by a Republican-controlled Congress.
“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,” the brief said. “The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate.”
The court has not said when it will hear oral arguments in the case, but it will likely be at the end of the year or early 2021. Democrats hope that by that time, voters will be choosing to remove Trump from office, or former Vice President Joe Biden will have already been installed as the country’s new leader.
On Thursday evening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to the decision by expressing disappointment. In a statement she said, “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.” She also added that there was “no moral excuse for the Trump Administration’s disastrous efforts to take away Americans’ health care.”