Numbers released this week by the government show just a slight dip in the number of people enrolled in Affordable Care Act coverage next year through HealthCare.gov. That’s the case even though the Republican-led Congress repealed fines for being uninsured effective Jan. 1. The drop — from 8.8 million to 8.5 million — was far less than experts forecast.
The commentariat of the health law and policy world scrambled the jets and armed their opinion weapons on Friday night when news broke: A federal district court judge in Texas had ruled the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate had, once again, been found unconstitutional and declared the remaining provisions of the law inseverable and therefore invalid. (The first holding actually has happened three times before, in other federal district courts, followed by different mixes of full inseverability, partial severability, and full severability, respectively.)
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a vote on a resolution that would have allowed the Senate to intervene in a federal lawsuit against ObamaCare.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) objected to a vote on the resolution and accused Democrats of playing politics. Only one senator needs to object to block a unanimous consent motion.
“Regardless of what happens in this legal process, we look to protect people with pre-existing conditions,” Barrasso said.
Nearly 8.5 million Americans signed up for Affordable Care Act health plans for 2019 in the 39 states relying on HealthCare.gov — with a last-minute rush that suggests shoppers were undeterred by a federal court ruling that deemed the law unconstitutional.
The tally as of midnight Saturday was a 4 percent drop from a year ago, according to federal figures released Wednesday. This is a decrease from 8.8 million last year.
The Health Care Choices Plan we developed would help the millions of people who are struggling to afford health insurance, particularly in the small group and individual markets, to have access to more choices of more affordable insurance while protecting the poor and the sick.
It is based upon formula grants to the states, using existing Obamacare resources, but with guidelines that incentivize states to provide people with more choices of more affordable coverage and even provide an escape hatch for people on Medicaid and CHIP to get better private coverage.
As we head toward the end of the year, biopharmaceutical companies are announcing their pricing strategies for 2019.
Merck & Co. raised the list price of five drugs, including its blockbuster cancer treatment Keytruda, in November — raising the price of Keytruda by 1.5 percent and its human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil by about 6 percent. The other three treatments that saw increases were vaccines.According to Merck, the average net price of their drugs declined 1.9 percent in 2017.
A federal judge’s surprise move late in the day on Dec. 14 to strike down the Affordable Care Act statute in its entirety is sending shock waves through the political world, but a jubilant lawyer on the winning legal team said the court ruling strikes a blow for freedom, is constitutionally sound, and is here to stay.
The Dec. 14 ruling by Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas was hailed by President Donald Trump but promptly assailed by former President Barack Obama, his liberal allies, and some legal commentators, largely on hyper-technical procedural grounds as opposed to whether the law itself runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution.
They say nothing is certain in life except for death and taxes. At this point, we might add Obamacare lawsuits to that list.
In the latest stage of ongoing legal challenges, Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that actions by Congress last year effectively invalidated the nearly 9-year-old law. However, despite this latest development, the ACA is still the law of the land and it probably will remain that way.
Last week, a federal district court judge in Texas ruled that ObamaCare – in its entirety – is unconstitutional.
ObamaCare’s defenders plan to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. The legal fight could drag on for years.
If the ruling is upheld, it’ll be a huge victory for the millions of Americans struggling with higher health care costs thanks to ObamaCare’s onerous regulations. It’s time for Congress to acknowledge ObamaCare’s failures and devolve authority for health policy to the states.
“This legal verdict is a reminder that Obamacare’s faulty architecture was created by Washington and we should not expect Washington to make it better. Congress should resist any knee-jerk reactions that prop up a failing health law.
And they don’t need to buy into the false dilemma that only Obamacare allows Americans with pre-existing conditions to get coverage. Instead, Congress should let states review their health insurance regulations and pursue innovative ways to make coverage more affordable and accessible to Americans—regardless of their income or medical status.”
