Thread: Obamacare ruled unconstitutional by Texas judge

Obamacare ruled unconstitutional by Texas judge

By Matt Richardson | Fox News
Published 2 days ago

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was struck down by a Texas judge on Friday, a move that could suddenly disrupt the health insurance status of millions of Americans. The decision comes amid a six-week open enrollment period for the program.

Texas, along with 19 states, had argued to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor that they had been hurt by a jump in the amount of people utilizing state-backed insurance. When Congress cut the tax penalty from the program in 2017, the states claimed, it essentially undercut the Supreme Court’s reasoning for finding former President Barack Obama’s signature legislation constitutional in 2012.

“The remainder of the ACA is non-severable from the individual mandate, meaning that the Act must be invalidated in whole,” O’Connor wrote in a 55-page opinion, according to Bloomberg. O'Connor is a conservative Republican appointee who previously blocked other Obama-era policies.

"As I predicted all along, Obamacare has been struck down as an UNCONSTITUTIONAL disaster," President Trump tweeted following the ruling. "Now Congress must pass a STRONG law that provides GREAT healthcare and protects pre-existing conditions. Mitch and Nancy, get it done!"

In a second tweet, the president declared the ruling to be "great news for America!"

California and other states ruled against by the judge will likely challenge the decision by appealing in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

“Today’s ruling is an assault on 133 million Americans with pre-existing conditions, on the 20 million Americans who rely on the A.C.A.’s consumer protections for health care, on America’s faithful progress toward affordable health care for all Americans,” Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, said in a statement, according to The New York Times. “The A.C.A. has already survived more than 70 unsuccessful repeal attempts and withstood scrutiny in the Supreme Court.”

“Obamacare has been struck down by a highly respected judge," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"The judge’s decision vindicates President Trump’s position that Obamacare is unconstitutional," Sanders continued. "Once again, the President calls on Congress to replace Obamacare and act to protect people with preexisting conditions and provide Americans with quality affordable healthcare. We expect this ruling will be appealed to the Supreme Court. Pending the appeal process, the law remains in place.”

Democratic leaders, meanwhile, reacted harshly to the decision.

"The ruling seems to be based on faulty legal reasoning and hopefully it will be overturned," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted. "Americans who care about working families must do all they can to prevent this district court ruling from becoming law."

“While the district court’s absurd ruling will be immediately appealed, Republicans are fully responsible for this cruel decision and for the fear they have struck into millions of families across America who are now in danger of losing their health coverage," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. "When House Democrats take the gavel, the House of Representatives will move swiftly to formally intervene in the appeals process to uphold the life-saving protections for people with pre-existing conditions and reject Republicans’ effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/oba...by-texas-judge

House Passes McCarran-Ferguson Repeal Bill

by Jennifer Webb
23 March 2017

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 372, the “Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2017” by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), by a bipartisan vote of 416-7.

The legislation would repeal the limited McCarran-Ferguson antitrust exemption for health insurers; however, it would let the exemption remain in place for other lines of insurance, such as property-casualty and life insurance.

During consideration of H.R. 372, Rep. Jon Conyers (D-Michigan) put forth an amendment that would have expanded the bill to include medical malpractice insurance. The Big “I” opposed this amendment and sent a letter with a number of other insurance trade associations stating joint opposition. In arguing for his amendment, Rep. Conyers stated, “Democrats have long supported a full repeal of McCarran-Ferguson antitrust exemption for all insurers, not just for health insurers.”

The McCarran-Ferguson Act was signed into law in 1945 in order to affirm the primacy of state insurance regulation. Pursuant to McCarran-Ferguson, state regulated insurance companies hold a limited exemption from federal antitrust laws. One of the main benefits of the exemption is that it allows insurers to share information on insurance losses so that the insurance industry can better project future losses and charge actuarial-based prices for their products. The ability to pool data actually serves to increase market competition by giving small insurers access to large data sets that are needed to appropriately rate insurance products.

The Big “I” strongly supports state insurance regulation and the limited antitrust exemption for the p-c and life insurance markets via the McCarran-Ferguson Act. In particular, the association believes the exemption is vital to the competitiveness of state p-c insurance markets.

Furthermore, while the Big “I” appreciates the intent of the authors of this legislation to help reform the country’s health insurance markets, the Big “I” believes the repeal of the exemption is highly unlikely to result in increased competition and might actually lead to the opposite. Previously, the Big “I” submitted testimony to a congressional hearing outlining the association’s concerns regarding H.R. 372.

Jennifer Webb is Big “I” federal government affairs counsel.

https://www.iamagazine.com/news/read...on-repeal-bill

Mr. President, Mick Mulvaney, Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell .... get a vote on this bill this week and "ERASE THE LINES". This was a major campaign goal of President Trump, this is one of the most important bills in the Senate right now, it passed almost unanimously in the US House of Representatives on a completely bi-partisan basis, there is NO EXPLANATION AT ALL, for this bill to still be sitting in Chuck Grassley's Judiciary Committee.

Shine the line on it, get a vote in committee, pass it out and get it to the floor of the US Senate this week. It should pass 100 to 0, and the President will sign it into law before the end of the year and the lines of states that prevent the health insurance industry from falling under the same scrutiny and federal anti-trust regulations that every other business and industry in the US is subject to will be ERASED, and rightly so.

Mick, your law degree specialty is anti-trust, you know the importance of this bill as much as the President, perhaps in details, even more than he does, so make the call and demand passage of this bill this week.

It's always mattered, but it really matters now because of the Texas Federal Court Ruling on Obamacare being unconstitutional, so providing insurance companies the motivation to re-establish national insurance plans at least for health insurance really matters now and they move into the new year. When insurance companies do business across state lines, this increases the size of the pools which in due course causes dramatic reductions in premium charges for the customers they insure.

GET IT DONE SENATE!!! ERASE THE LINES!!!! PASS HR 372 IMMEDIATELY!