Obamacare In The ER Again

While we were all watching and waiting concerning Trump's indictment and Texas Federal Judge Matt Kacsmaryk ending the FDA approval of abortion medication, another Texas Federal Judge just shot Obamacare in the chest and left potentially tens of millions of Americans without preventative healthcare.

 

A federal judge in Texas said Thursday that some Affordable Care Act mandates cannot be enforced nationwide, including those that require insurers to cover a wide array of preventive care services at no cost to the patient, including some cancer, heart and STD screenings, and smoking cessation programs.

In the new ruling, US District Judge Reed O’Connor said the recommendations that have been issued by the US Preventive Services Task Force, which has been tasked with determining some of the preventive care treatments that Obamacare requires to be covered.

O’Connor’s ruling comes after the judge had already said that the Task Force’s recommendations violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. The judge also deemed unlawful the ACA requirement that insurers and employers offer plans that cover HIV-prevention measures such as PrEP for free.

Other preventive care mandates under the ACA remain in effect.

It is likely the case will be appealed, and the Justice Department has the option to ask that O’Connor’s ruling be put on pause while the appeal is litigated.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment, nor did the US Department of Health and Human Services.

The decision, in a case brought by employers and individuals in Texas, represents the latest legal attack on the landmark 2010 health care law. It is unclear what immediate practical effect O’Connor’s new ruling will have for those with job-based and Affordable Care Act policies because insurance companies will likely continue no-cost coverage for the remainder of the contracts even though the Obamacare requirements in question have been blocked.

While the case does not pose the existential threat to the Affordable Care Act that previous legal challenges posed, legal experts say that O’Connor’s ruling nonetheless puts in jeopardy the access some Americans will have to a whole host of preventive treatments.

“We lose a huge chunk of preventive services because health plans can now impose costs,” said Andrew Twinamatsiko, associate director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. “People who are sensitive to cost will go without, mostly poor people and marginalized communities.”

 

So unless this gets resolved soon, next year your health care plan won't include preventative screenings, because health insurers won't pay for them anymore. It means screening for cancer, mammograms, pre-natal care, even checkups may become too expensive for millions of us.

 

This is a potential disaster. I'm hoping the Biden administration will move quickly to appeal, but the question of even basic health care is now as uncertain as it was 15 years ago, and it's twice as expensive now as it was then.

 

Republicans just love misery.