Obamacare appeal heads to Right-leaning Supreme Court

AMERICA’S new-look conservativeleaning Supreme Court looks set to rule next year whether to overturn Barack Obama’s flagship healthcare policy.

The highest court in the US is expected to consider Mr Obama’s signature Obamacare legacy after a judge in Texas declared it unconstitutional. Donald Trump, whose appointments have tipped the balance in the court to the Right, wrote on Twitter, “Great news for America!” and said Obamacare was an “unconstitutional disaster”.

Mr Trump suffered a setback on a different front as Ryan Zinke, his interior secretary, became the latest to announce he will leave the White House, vacating his post at the end of the year.

Mr Zinke, 51, a former Navy Seal, had headed a rolling-back of environmental regulations, and expansion of oil and gas drilling, but was facing a host of ethics investigations relating to business dealings.

In Texas, Judge Reed O’Connor delivered his 55-page ruling on the eve of the deadline for Americans to sign up for 2019 health insurance coverage under Obamacare.

Republicans have long opposed the system, officially introduced by the Af- fordable Care Act in 2010. Mr Trump made its abolition one of his main campaign pledges in 2016, but an attempt to repeal it in Congress failed last year.

Judge O’Connor said changes to the law introduced by Mr Trump’s overhaul of the tax system in 2017 had affected the legality of Obamacare.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated Obamacare’s so-called “individual mandate” under which people who failed to sign up and pay for health insurance were subjected to a fine.

Judge O’Connor ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act should now be struck down because the individual mandate had been its “keystone”.

The law will remain in place pending an appeal process, which is expected to reach the Supreme Court next year.

Obamacare has been considered twice by the court before, in 2012 and 2015, and opponents lost. However, this will be the first time that Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the conservative Supreme Court justice nominated by Mr Trump this year, will have an input.

Five judges on the nine-strong court who voted for Obamacare previously are still in place. The case in Texas was brought by the administrations of 20 Republican US states, and opposed by a host of Democrat states.