{"id":1317424,"date":"2019-12-26T22:36:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-27T05:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/micek-column-why-you-need-to-worry-about-attacks-on-obamacare\/"},"modified":"2019-12-26T22:36:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-27T05:36:00","slug":"micek-column-why-you-need-to-worry-about-attacks-on-obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/micek-column-why-you-need-to-worry-about-attacks-on-obamacare\/","title":{"rendered":"Micek column: Why you need to worry about attacks on Obamacare"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

If you\u2019re celebrating a recent federal appellate court ruling that overturned language in the Affordable Care Act requiring you to have health insurance or pay a penalty, you may want to put away the party favors.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, like a Pandora\u2019s box, the ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals now puts at risk other parts of the 2009 law at risk, like the ban on denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions and language allowing young people to stay on their parents\u2019 insurance until they\u2019re 26 years old.<\/p>\n

Why? Because the appellate court returned the case to a federal court judge in Texas, who earlier declared the entire law unconstitutional, effectively starting the clock over again.<\/p>\n

Legal experts say this \u201cremand and delay strategy,\u201d likely guarantees the Affordable Care Act will end up before a U.S. Supreme Court that\u2019s even more conservative than it is now, multiplying the chances the whole law will be declared unconstitutional by the nation\u2019s highest court.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re thinking \u201cOh that won\u2019t affect me, I get coverage through my employer,\u201d think again.<\/p>\n

According to the Urban Institute, a Supreme Court ruling overturning the Affordable Care Act will impact every American who has health insurance \u2013 whether through work, Medicare or Medicaid.<\/p>\n

A recent study by the left-leaning Center for American Progress drove home the effect in real numbers:<\/p>\n

\u2013 More than 130 million Americans, according to CAP, have preexisting conditions. They could end up paying more or being denied coverage entirely.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Overturning the healthcare law would mean that 45,600 people in every congressional district in the country would lose coverage.<\/p>\n

\u2013 States would lose $135 billion in federal funding for people enrolled in Medicaid and marketplace financial assistance \u201cin 2019 alone.\u201d That means those costs would either be passed along to taxpayers, or, more likely, people would be dropped from the rolls.<\/p>\n

And in the short term, the appellate court\u2019s ruling \u201cwill harm insurance markets, driving premium increases,\u201d said Topher Spiro, CAP\u2019s vice president for healthcare policy, which will spike \u201cneedless anxiety and suffering for patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth pausing to note the law\u2019s Republican opponents in Congress, abetted by the GOP attorneys general who brought the original Texas lawsuit, don\u2019t have a Plan B. So as much as the debate over the Affordable Care Act is a legal issue, it\u2019s a political one as well.<\/p>\n

And right now \u2013 public opinion is on the law\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

Fifty-two percent of respondents to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in November said they had a favorable opinion of the law, compared to 41 percent who had a negative opinion. Unsurprisingly, Democratic support ran strongest at 83 percent, pollsters found, while barely 2 in 10 Republicans (22 percent) said the same.<\/p>\n

Tellingly, however, a clear majority of independents (52 percent) said they had a favorable opinion of the law \u2013 and that\u2019s a constituency that both Democrats and Republicans will be vying for in 2020.<\/p>\n

For now, the Affordable Care Act also continues to poll better than Medicare for All, which is embraced by Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Depending on how it\u2019s described, public support for a federally run, single-payer program charts at 47 to 48 percent, that same Kaiser Family Foundation poll found.<\/p>\n

A decade on from its creation, the Affordable Care Act is a bedrock part of the American healthcare landscape.<\/p>\n

And while some may object to it conceptually, it\u2019s a certainty that most Americans would not want to return to those pre-2009 days of pre-existing condition coverage denials and exploding uncompensated care costs for hospitals.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not perfect. But it\u2019s better than nothing at all. And nothing is exactly what the law\u2019s foes want to return to \u2013 and that can\u2019t ever be allowed to happen.<\/p>\n

Email John Micek at jmicek@penncapital-star.com<\/a> and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re celebrating a recent federal appellate court ruling that overturned language in the Affordable Care Act requiring you to have health insurance or pay a penalty, you may want to put away the party favors. That\u2019s because, like a Pandora\u2019s box, the ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals now puts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1317424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 07:24:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}