Trump aims to end 2010 health care law

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that his administration would not alter its call for the Supreme Court to strike down the 2010 health care law.

“We want to terminate health care under Obamacare,” Trump told reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office. He said Republicans hoped to replace the 2010 health care law with a more affordable alternative that maintains protections for people with preexisting conditions.

As the United States grapples with the highest number of COVID-19 cases of any country in the world, some Democrats are taking a different approach by seeking to expand government-funded insurance coverage in upcoming legislation and defending the health care law in court.

“We’re staying with Texas and the group,” Trump said. “Obamacare is a disaster, but we’ve made it barely acceptable.”

The administration sided with a coalition of Republican state attorneys general, led by Texas’ Ken Paxton. The group sued in 2018, arguing that the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as “Obamacare,” was unconstitutional after Republicans effectively ended the so-called “individual mandate” in the 2017 tax overhaul by zeroing out the penalty for most Americans without insurance coverage.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the mandate was invalid but punted to a district court judge questions about whether the rest of the law should stand back. The Supreme Court agreed in March to hear the case.

Trump’s comments came as House Democrats and Democratic state officials argued in opening briefs filed Wednesday to the Supreme Court that the Affordable Care Act is critical in fighting the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

If the law is struck down, approximately 20 million people who have gained coverage because of it would be uninsured and protections for people with preexisting conditions would be eliminated.