Unhealthy and unwise

After failing to get a comprehensive Affordable Care Act repeal through Congress — you know, the place where laws are supposed to be made — and then winning a repeal of one of the law’s provisions in last year’s massive tax cut, the Trump administration now asks a judge to undo the rest of the law through the courts.

This is a brazen act of executive overreach. If it succeeds, it will endanger the coverage of thousands of sick Americans.

In federal court in Texas Thursday, where 20 states are suing to undo pieces of Obamacare, the Justice Department jumped in on the states’ side with a stunning argument.

Namely, they claim that the law’s individual mandate levying a tax penalty on individuals who refuse to buy health insurance is unconstitutional. And that, since Congress has removed that piece of the statute through the legislative process, the rest of the Jenga tower should now fall.

Why? Basically just because. No wonder three career lawyers withdrew from the case just before the government filed its papers.

This would mean no more “guaranteed issue” — that’s the federal ban on insurance companies denying coverage to those with preexisting conditions. No more “community rating” — those are the federal restrictions limiting what companies can charge people on the basis of age and other factors.

It is one thing for states to claim in court that these interwoven pieces of the legislation should be invalidated. It is another and far more dangerous step for this administration to abandon, on the flimsiest rationale, a law duly passed by a previous Congress and signed by a previous President.

Trump policy changes already executed are likely to send younger and healthier people fleeing from the insurance rolls, driving up costs for the rest of us. In New York State, individual plans are seeing 24% increases.

If the President gets his way, that’s just the early stage of a disease that’s about to get a whole lot deadlier.