Efforts to Roll Back the ACA Continue
(c) Dwight Nadig
Despite Congressional Republicans’ failure to repeal the ACA, the law that provides access to health coverage to millions of Americans remains under heavy pressure. The latest legislative attack stems from the repeal of the individual mandate penalty; a number of Republican-led states are using that change to argue that the rest of the ACA should be overturned as well. A 20-state coalition filed a lawsuit in a US District Court in Texas that argues, to quote this article from The Hill, “the tax law ‘eliminated the tax penalty of the ACA, without eliminating the mandate itself. What remains, then, is the individual mandate, without any accompanying exercise of Congress’s taxing power, which the Supreme Court already held that Congress has no authority to enact.’” It’s not clear how far this will go, given that similar suits have failed. But, along with the repeal of the individual mandate and efforts by the Trump administration and GOP-led states to unwind many of the law’s insurance reforms, it’s an indication that the turmoil in the individual markets is likely to get worse before it gets better.