(The Hill)
A federal judge in Texas cast new uncertainty on the fate of ObamaCare when he issued a ruling striking down the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA). U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor's decision Friday sent shockwaves through the country and health-care industry after he ruled in favor of a challenge from 20 GOP-led states and struck down the law. As the political world scrambles to figure out the implications, here are five takeaways from the decision:
ObamaCare is still in effect and people can still sign up
Despite the high-profile ruling, nothing has changed in the short term involving coverage under the law. The Affordable Care Act is still in effect and providing people with health insurance. In fact, the deadline to sign up for coverage next year is early Sunday morning, at 3 a.m., so there are still a few hours to sign up.
The ruling will not go into effect until there are appeals to higher courts, where many expect it to be reversed. But there is the risk of confusion from all of the headlines about the law being struck down. Some supporters of the law have accused the judge, a conservative appointee of former President George W. Bush, of purposefully ruling the night before the deadline in an effort to depress enrollment.
“Although this ruling is not in effect, will be appealed, and will likely be reversed, it is causing mass harm,” Topher Spiro, vice president for health policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, wrote on Twitter. “Many will be deterred from enrolling. Many will suffer anxiety and fear.”
The decision was widely panned
Both conservative and liberal legal experts denounced O’Connor’s decision as departing wildly from well-established legal principles. Abbe Gluck, a Yale law professor and supporter of the ACA, wrote a joint opinion piece in The New York Times on Saturday with Jonathan Adler, a Case Western Reserve law professor and opponent of the health law. “We agree that this decision makes a mockery of the rule of law and basic principles of democracy,” they wrote.
O’Connor ruled that because in 2012 the Supreme Court upheld the law’s mandate to have coverage under the power to tax, once Congress repealed the penalty for failing to comply with the mandate last year, the mandate is no longer a tax and therefore is unconstitutional. But where legal experts particularly criticize O’Connor is his next step, where he ruled that because the mandate is unconstitutional, the rest of the Affordable Care Act is also invalid. Experts say that violates the established legal standard that Congress’s intent should be the guide, and in this case it is obvious that Congress intended for the rest of the Affordable Care Act to remain when it repealed only the mandate penalty last year. Read more