While many of us were absorbed in the impeachment activities last week, a three- judge panel of the 5th District (two Republicans and one Democrat) ruled on the malicious opinion last year by ultra- right Judge Reed O'Connor ruling the entire Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") unconstitutional. While a vast majority of legal experts saw O'Connor's ruling as "unmoored" and "embarrassing," handing the case over to a majority- Republican panel could only have a reasonable, positive outcome, amirite?
A federal appeals court Wednesday struck down part of the Affordable Care Act, ruling that its requirement that most Americans carry insurance is unconstitutional while sending back to a lower court the question of whether the rest of the law can remain without it.
The long-awaited decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has little immediate practical effect on consumers because Congress already has removed the penalty for people who flout the insurance requirement. But the panel’s 2-to-1 ruling leaves the rest of the sprawling statute in limbo, catapulting questions of insurance coverage and consumer health-care protections to the forefront of the 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns. [snip]
The 5th Circuit decision almost certainly will bring the health-care law before the Supreme Court for a third time, and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, leading a coalition of his Democratic counterparts fighting to preserve the law, said Wednesday night that he was prepared to ask the high court to take the case before the lower court rules again. But by sending a thorny legal question back to the Texas jurist who already has held the law unconstitutional, the judges may effectively slow the progress of the case, so that the high court does not take it during its current term and decide it before the November elections.It would be political malpractice at an historic level if Democrats don't make this assault on the health care of millions of Americans a centerpiece of their campaigns at every level in 2020. One need only look at the 2018 Congressional elections, where health care was the policy driver behind the blue wave that swept Democrats into power in the House of Representatives, to see that standing up for affordable health care is not only the right thing to do, but also a political winner:
Health care has become the single most important policy topic in the midterm elections—everywhere and nowhere, a strange kind of omnipresent sleeper issue. It’s not grabbing many national headlines, compared with the migrant caravan or the Supreme Court fight or violence directed against minority groups or the trade war, but it’s motivating voters in race after race after race. New polling from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that Americans point to the cost of health care more than any other issue when asked what is most important to them this election cycle. “It’s official: The 2018 midterms are about health care,” Wesleyan argued. [snip]
For Democrats, the pitch to those voters is straightforward: We are the party that will shore up the Affordable Care Act, maintain protections for preexisting conditions, and work to make coverage universal and affordable. For the first time in years, the party is defending a popular law rather than an unpopular one—and is doing so vocally, playing on voters’ very real fears that Republicans will take away their coverage...Republicans -- whether in the White (Supremacist) House, the Senate, the House, state legislatures or the judiciary -- want to take away access to affordable health care. Period. Why? The common denominator is that they're Republicans, and it's in their DNA to try to restrict or eliminate social health and welfare services, especially if they're Democratic programs and if their base thinks most of the pain is being inflicted elsewhere. (Remember, if the rotted- out Republican Party stands for nothing else, it stand for afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable.)
(Image: Republican Koch brothers' "Creepy Uncle Sam" character, used in ads to misinform people about the Affordable Care Act. Today, the "Creepy Uncle Sam" is the Trump regime and the rotted- out Republican Party. The Republicans won't stop fighting, but neither will we.)
