The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Health care ‘mandate’ invalid, federal court rules
Decision doesn’t address whether the rest of ACA can stand.
NEW ORLEANS — The “individual mandate” of former President Barack Obama’s health care law is invalid, but other parts of the law need further review, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The 2-1 ruling handed down by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans largely sidestepped what happens to some of the most popular parts of the Affordable Care Act such as protections for those with pre-existing conditions, Medicaid expansion and the ability for children younger than 26 to remain on their parents’ insurance.
The panel agreed with Texas-based U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor’s 2018 finding that the law’s insurance requirement, the so-called “individual mandate,” was rendered unconstitutional when Congress, in 2017, reduced a tax on people without insurance to zero.
The court reached no decision on the big question: How much of the Affordable Care Act must fall along with the insurance mandate? The ACA has remained in place while the question of its future has been litigated in court.
“It may still be that none of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate, even after this inquiry is concluded,” Judge Jennifer Elrod wrote, referring to the scenario that would doom Obamacare in its entirety. “It may be that all of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate. It may also be that some of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate, and some is not,”
In dissent, Judge Carolyn Dineen King said her colleagues were prolonging “uncertainty over the future of the healthcare sector.” King would have found the mandate constitutional, although unenforceable, and would have left the rest of the law alone.
“Without any enforcement mechanism to speak of, questions about the legality of the individual ‘mandate’ are purely academic, and people can purchase insurance — or not — as they please,” King wrote.
Republican state attorneys general from 18 conservative-leaning states, including Georgia’s Chris Carr, brought the latest court challenge to the health care law, and the Trump administration joined in.
Carr did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening. After the District Court’s ruling in Texas a year ago, he told the AJC, “Now, Congress has an opportunity to do things the right way and pass a health care law that Georgians and our nation truly deserve – one that increases choice, lowers costs and protects those with pre-existing conditions.”
The court’s ruling ensures Obamacare will remain a political issue during the 2020 election campaign, giving Democrats a line of attack against President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.