ANTI-ACA states may lose, even if they win lawsuit
Lifting of pre-existing conditions shield could be costly to states
If the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions are struck down in court, residents of the Republican-led states that are challenging the law have the most to lose.
“These states have been opposed to the ACA from the beginning,” said Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “They’re hurting their most vulnerable citizens.”
Twenty Republican state attorneys general and governors challenged the constitutionality of the ACA in federal court in February. Last month, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice made the unusual decision not to defend key portions of the law against this legal challenge.
The states’ lawsuit argues that because Congress eliminated the Obamacare tax penalty for not having insurance coverage, effective next year, the entire law is unconstitutional. By extension, the suit calls on federal courts to find the health law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions unconstitutional — and Sessions agrees.
Nine of the 11 states with the highest rates of pre-existing conditions among adults under 65 have signed onto the lawsuit to strike down the ACA, according to data from insurance companies and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 2015 data, the most recent available, were analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2016. (Kaiser Health News, which produces California Healthline, is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)
Those who support the lawsuit contend that there are other means of protecting people with pre-existing conditions.
“If a court strikes down the constitutionality of the ACA, there are ways to repeal and replace without Arizonans with