Only the cruelest sadists could possibly think it’s a great idea to cancel 20 million Americans’ health coverage, especially in the midst of a pandemic. But that’s indeed what the sadists are determined to do. I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump and certain litigious lawyers in the Republican party.
On March 22 – the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare – Trump was asked whether he supports a long-festering lawsuit, championed by 18 Republican attorneys general and soon destined for the U.S. Supreme Court, that would kill Obamacare in its entirety. Does he really want to do that? Yes, he replied: “What we want to do is terminate it.”
These awful people are more obsessed than Inspector Javert in Les Miserables. The difference is, they don’t drown in the sewers of the Seine. Instead they keep going to court, to screw with American lives. Because despite the fact that the Supreme Court has twice affirmed Obamacare – in 2012 and 2015 – the GOP’s Javerts don’t know how to stop.
This autumn, the attorney general of Texas (representing his counterparts in 17 other red states) is slated to argue in front of the Supreme Court that the entirety of Obamacare is unconstitutional. If that seems recklessly nuts – given what the court has already ruled; given the prospect of throwing 20 million people off their coverage and deepening the health care system’s crisis at the worst possible time – then I need only remind you of the Republican party’s descent into nihilism.
See if you can swing with this logic:
A few years ago, the GOP AGs sought to kill Obamacare by suing it. In 2017, when the Republican Congress passed its big tax cut bill, it also erased a key Obamacare provision known as the individual mandate penalty. Obamacare required Americans to pay a penalty if they refused health coverage; the Republicans reduced that penalty to zero. They did not abolish the penalty provision per se; they just neutered it.
The GOP AGs pounced on that. They argued – and a federal judge in Texas agreed in December ’18 – that because Congress had neutered the penalty, it meant that the penalty itself was unconstitutional; and that since the penalty was supposedly unconstitutional, that meant the entire law had to be unconstitutional.
Many conservative scholars and lawmakers thought the GOP AGs’ argument was ridiculous; according to traditional (i.e. conservative) legal doctrine, courts can’t blow away an entire law when Congress takes aim at only one provision. Senator Lamar Alexander said the argument was “as far-fetched as any I’ve ever heard. I am not aware of a single senator who said they were voting to repeal Obamacare when they voted to eliminate the individual mandate penalty.” And the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page said that judges can’t kill laws “by fiat,” especially not when “millions of people now rely on Obamacare’s subsidies.”
But Trump loves the lawsuit. Naturally.
The high court has agreed to hear it this fall; 17 Democratic AGs will defend the law. Trump has no replacement plan for Obamacare, of course, and neither do Republican lawmakers – but he wants to “terminate” Obamacare anyway, because Obama. And if the high court, with its new Trump appointees, agrees to terminate in a ruling next year, when we’re still dealing, at minimum, with the aftershocks of the pandemic…well, it’s safe to say that Trump hasn’t gamed out the human consequences: the millions who would be newly uninsured, the millions who would lose protection for their pre-existing conditions, the millions of young adults thrown off their parents’ coverage.
On the bright side (grading on a curve), the endless Republican assault on Obamacare plays poorly with the electorate. We saw that in the 2018 midterms. The blue wave that swept House Democrats into power – a net gain of 40 seats; a winning nationwide margin of nearly 10 million votes – was built on a vocal defense of Obamacare. According to the ’18 exits, health care was the top issue by a decisive margin; those voters favored Democratic candidates by 75 to 23 percent. This fall, when the Texas attorney general assails Obamacare in front of the Supreme Court, Democrats – led by nominee Joe Biden – would be wise to highlight it.
Indeed, Biden has sent a letter to Trump and the AGs: “At a time of national emergency, which is laying bare the existing vulnerabilities in our public health infrastructure, it is unconscionable that you are pursuing a lawsuit designed to strip millions of Americans of their health insurance and protections.”
In response, the GOP says that Biden is playing “petty politics.” And that his complaint is in “poor taste.”
It’s “poor taste” to go to bat for people’s health coverage, in the throes of a pandemic? Once again, Republicans have demonstrated that cruelty is their preexisting condition.