The coronavirus pandemic is getting worse as more states see infection levels spike. More than 20 million people have lost their jobs due to the economic shutdown, and many lost their employer-provided health coverage as well. The nation faces a crippling public health crisis and an economic disaster at the same time.
And yet, the Trump administration is pressing ahead with plans to kill the Affordable Care Act – the very program that’s providing millions of people with a lifeline.
The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court late Thursday to strike down the entire ACA. Hours earlier, the administration acknowledged that nearly half a million people who lost their health insurance in the economic fallout gained coverage thanks to the ACA, which was President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement.
If the court agrees with the administration and Republican-led states suing to overturn the ACA, even universally popular provisions – such as one barring insurers from denying coverage for preexisting conditions – would go out the window.
AFSCME President Lee Saunders laced into the Trump administration, saying in a statement today: “There they go again. To take away health coverage from 23 million Americans and gut protections for people with preexisting conditions is reckless at any time. To do so during a global pandemic – in the middle of the worst public health crisis in a century – is a new, cruel, unconscionable and immoral low for this administration."
President Donald Trump tried and failed to overturn the ACA early in his term. Then a group of states led by right-wing politicians got a Texas federal judge to declare the law unconstitutional. States that support the ACA appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which the Trump administration now hopes will do its bidding and kill the law.