Challenge to Obamacare to be Heard by Supreme Court

Y’all. It’s been 10 years since the Affordable Care Act was enacted. 10 years of Americans getting insurance and Republicans inexplicably being butt hurt about it. Hopefully, good or bad, a Supreme Court decision will finally get them to shut the hell up about it.

CBS News reports that the Supreme Court is set to hear a challenge to Obamacare when it starts its next term this fall. A decision is expected by June of 2021. The case revolves around the individual mandate in the law that required all Americans to be insured. The mandate was removed from the law when the GOP did its whole little tax code overhaul in 2017 that ultimately did nothing. As a result, this led to GOP-led states filing a lawsuit claiming that the individual mandate was unconstitutional because they changed the law. They believe that the mandate can’t be separated from the law and it all should be abolished.

A federal district court judge in Texas (of course) ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional in 2018 and struck down the entire law. His ruling was put on hold while the case continued to be litigated. In December, a split panel of judges on the 5th Circuit ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional but didn’t decide whether or not the Affordable Care Act could stand without it. They then sent the case down to the lower courts for them to debate the issue.

This seems like a real lose-lose for Republicans and I don’t get how they don’t see that. If the Supreme Court rules that the law can stand without the mandate then they wasted everyone’s time and didn’t get what they wanted. If they succeed, this will upend the healthcare system and take away insurance from millions of Americans. People, as a general rule, tend to like having insurance. Obamacare has been a constant for ten years, folks are used to it. Taking it away from people with nothing close to a replacement plan just seems short-sighted and dumb.

Granted, this is the party of failing upward we’re talking about.