The Herald-Mail (Hagerstown, MD) June 27, 2018
Now that President Donald Trump's Department of Justice
has decided not to defend the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act in
court, what could change for the average Illinoisan should key provisions be
deemed illegal?
Republican governors and attorneys general from 20 states
are waging a battle with several of their Democratic counterparts in a Texas
federal court saying that the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act,
commonly referred to as Obamacare, is unconstitutional. Because the Department
of Justice isn't defending the law, Democrat attorneys general from more than a
dozen states have been allowed to defend the merits of the law.
Naomi Lopez-Bauman, of the Goldwater Institute, said the
challenge stems from last winter's tax reform laws setting the penalty for not
having insurance at zero.
"Because there's no penalty, then there's actually no
tax in the Affordable Care Act," she said.
A ruling in their favor, she said, would dismantle parts
of Obamacare that relate to the individual mandate.
"Anything that's tied to that could be struck
down," she said.
Namely, people who receive insurance through a marketplace
created by the ACA and not from an employer.
Because of the delayed nature of the legal battle (2019 is
when any changes would take place and a Supreme Court opinion would be years
away), the battle for Congress may well undo the case's best argument.
Lopez-Bauman said that a Democrat-controlled Congress could "set the
policy at a dollar, the tax would be there again."
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