I've been doing health policy for thirty years. I arguably know something about health insurance.
For the life of me, I can't figure out what Kelly Loeffler is proposing under her health plan––particularly when it comes to current protections for preexisting conditions.
After hearing the Supreme Court's oral arguments this morning over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), I can double down on my prediction the Court will not wreck Obamacare.
This is an update of an article originally posted in September.
With the Supreme Court due to hear arguments this week on a case brought by a number of Republican state attorneys general that could throw out the entire health care law, and with conservatives now having a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, there is great concern among ACA/Obamacare supporters that this could well mean the end of the health care law.
The Obamacare case currently before the court deals with the 2017 repeal of the law's tax penalty enforcing the individual mandate for people to buy health insurance coverage. In 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote in the 5-4 decision upholding Obamacare generally, and the individual mandate specifically, as valid under the Congress' taxing power. After the mandate's tax penalty was repealed in 2017, a number of Republican state attorneys general sued, arguing that since the mandate was no longer tied to a specific tax penalty, it had lost its legal underpinning. They also argued that because the individual mandate was key to a number of the law's provisions that made it a workable system of insurance, the entire law should fall, including preexisting conditions protections.
Biden has won.
Presuming the North Carolina and Alaska Senate seats remain in Republican hands, the Senate will come out no better for Democrats than a 50-50 tie with Vice President-elect Harris being the tiebreaker. And, if Republicans win at least one of the two Georgia run-off Senate races, the Republicans will maintain control and the Democrats will not have the votes to move any partisan health care legislation.
But the Democrats will control the Department of Health and Human Services and the federal government's health care regulatory apparatus.
I will suggest that the health care plan Biden campaigned on can be summarized into three primary parts:
