Federal Judge in Texas Rules Against Obamacare
“The court finds the individual mandate can no longer be fairly read as an exercise of Congress’s tax power and is still impermissible under the interstate commerce clause ― meaning the individual mandate is unconstitutional…. [T]he court finds the individual mandate is essential to and inseverable from the remainder of the ACA,” O’Connor wrote in his opinion.
If the ruling stands, the Affordable Care Act’s insurance regulations would disappear and, along with them, the health coverage for millions of people who gained private insurance or Medicaid coverage under the 2010 law signed by President Barack Obama. Specifically, the law’s guarantee of coverage for people regardless of their pre-existing conditions, financial assistance for private insurance, rules establishing a basic minimum set of benefits insurance policies must cover and more would vanish. Since O’Connor’s ruling throws out the entire statute, the rest of the ACA, such as its expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults, also is stricken.
In short, this ruling would deal severe damage to the American health care system. It also would eradicate one of Obama’s most significant accomplishments. According to an analysis by the Urban Institute, eliminating the Affordable Care Act would increase the national uninsured rate by 50 percent and lead to more than 17 million people losing health coverage.