President Trump on Saturday reiterated a vow to protect those with preexisting conditions after his administration asked the Supreme Court this week to strike down ObamaCare, Republicans’ latest move to dismantle the health care law.
“Now that the very expensive, unpopular and unfair Individual Mandate provision has been terminated by us, many States & the U.S. are asking the Supreme Court that Obamacare itself be terminated so that it can be replaced with a FAR BETTER AND MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE ALTERNATIVE,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning.
“Obamacare is a joke! Deductible is far too high and the overall cost is ridiculous. My Administration has gone out of its way to manage OC much better than previous, but it is still no good. I will ALWAYS PROTECT PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS,ALWAYS!!!” he added.
Trump has long railed against former President Obama’s signature health care law. His latest tweet comes as the administration faces criticism for its effort this week to have the Affordable Care Act (ACA) squashed amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The administration on Thursday filed a legal brief to the Supreme Court asking that the ACA be invalidated, a move that would take away health insurance coverage for about 20 million people and make health care a chief issue a little more than four months out from the presidential election.
The brief argues that because the law’s requirement to have health insurance was upheld in court as a tax in 2012 and Congress repealed the financial penalty for violating that requirement in 2017, it is no longer a tax and therefore no longer constitutional.
The administration argues that because this one provision is invalid and the rest of the law is so intertwined with this provision, the entire law should be scrapped.
The ACA’s provision protecting people with preexisting conditions from losing their insurance is one of the law’s most popular aspects. Trump has repeatedly maintained such protections will remain in place despite his administration’s efforts to have the entire law overturned.
Democrats quickly seized on the administration’s latest Supreme Court filing as being particularly ill-timed during a pandemic that has already killed more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and is seeing a resurgence in a number of states in the South and Southwest.
“President Trump and the Republicans’ campaign to rip away the protections and benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement.
Trump campaigned on repealing and replacing ObamaCare, though he has not presented his own alternative to the signature health care law during his tenure in the White House. An effort to repeal ObamaCare failed in the Senate in 2017.