Keep ACA before 2020 voters

This appeared in the Sun Sentinel. I n ducking its opportunity to rule on the constitutionality of the entire Affordable Care Act, a federal appeals court has done a large favor for President Trump and the Republican Party. But it leaves millions of people in uncertainty and anxiety. It was unnecessary and unethical.

By sending the case back to the district judge in Texas who had ruled against Obamacare, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals virtually guaranteed that it won’t reach the Supreme Court in time for a final decision before the November election.

That lets Trump and his party off the hook, inviting them to duck the issue during the campaign, rather than level with the voters on how — or whether — they would replace what the courts might eventually throw out.

Trump and the Republicans want the court to trash Obamacare, but not in time for the voters to hold it against them in November. And no matter the potentially drastic, even deadly, consequences for everyone who depends on its coverage.

That’s virtually everyone in America, not just the 11.4 million who obtained health insurance through the Obamacare marketplaces or the 13.6 million who were added to the Medicaid rolls in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The ACA also guarantees private insurance coverage despite preexisting medical conditions, allows children to remain on parental health plans until age 26, makes insurance companies return excess profits, forbids them from canceling policies except for fraud, bars lifetime limits on benefits and requires large employers to offer insurance to their workers.

Everyone running for office next year, from the president to the Congress to the state legislatures, should be ready to answer how much or how little of the ACA they would have their party replace if the courts eventually overturn it. Health care topped all other issues in an exit poll of voters in the 2018 midterms, which returned the House to Democratic control, and is second in the current campaign only to Trump’s impeachment.

The Fifth Circuit’s decision is glaring in that the trial judge had already declared all of Obamacare unconstitutional because Congress repealed the tax charged to people who did not obtain insurance. The appeals court sent it back to him to explain his reasoning about the rest. That was an act of judicial laziness if not worse.

And the 2-1 split of judges illustrates the worsening politicization of the federal judiciary along ideological and partisan lines. The two judges in the majority owe their appointments to Presidents George W. Bush and Trump. The dissenter, Senior Judge Carolyn Dineen King, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, rebuked the Texas judge for accepting a case in which there was no real violation of anyone’s rights. Congress, she emphasized, had made its intent plain by repealing only the tax, not any of the other elements of the law.

It bears remembering that human lives are at stake in what might seem to be an arcane legal battle over federal jurisprudence.