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 The Justice Department, in a two-sentence letter to the U.S. 5th
Circuit Court of Appeals filed on Monday, said it backed a federal
judge's ruling in December that the Affordable Care Act violated the
U.S. Constitution because it required people to buy health
insurance.
The letter said the Justice Department would file a more extensive
legal briefing later.
Democrats said the move to overturn Obamacare would overshadow
Republican President Donald Trump's claim of victory following the
conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election. The legal filing
gave Democrats a natural opening to focus on an issue they say is
more important to voters than the Mueller investigation.
"We always felt that the issues that affect average Americans -
healthcare, climate change, jobs - (are) far more important to them,
and to us, than what happens in an investigation," Senate Minority
Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.
Democrats made defending Obamacare a powerful messaging tool in the
run-up to the November's elections, when opinion polls showed eight
in 10 Americans wanted to defend its most popular benefits,
including protections for insurance coverage for people with
pre-existing conditions. The strategy paid off, and Democrats won a
38-seat majority in the House of Representatives.
The 2010 healthcare law, seen as the signature domestic achievement
of Trump's Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, has been a
flashpoint of American politics since its passage, with Republicans,
including Trump, repeatedly attempting to overturn it.
Previously, the Trump administration had said portions of Obamacare
should be struck down and others should survive, including a
state-led expansion of Medicaid health insurance for the poor. Trump
had said he would not cut that aspect when campaigning for the White
House, although his 2020 budget proposal slashed the program's
funding.
"The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of healthcare
- you watch," Trump told reporters upon arriving at U.S. Capitol on
Thursday for lunch with Republican lawmakers. He offered no details.
One of the first moves Democrats made after regaining control of the
House was intervening in the Texas lawsuit to rebut the claim
brought by a coalition of 20 Republican-led states. Texas, Alabama,
Florida and the 17 other states had said a Trump-backed change to
the U.S. tax code made Obamacare unconstitutional.
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"Americans raised their hand and said, 'We want the Affordable Care
Act protected, therefore we're going to vote for the party that says
it will protect and preserve and, yes, even expand the Affordable
Care Act,'" Representative Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat,
said at a Tuesday news conference.
Obamacare survived a 2012 legal challenge at the Supreme Court when
a majority of justices ruled the individual mandate aspect of the
program, which requires individuals to buy insurance or pay a
penalty, was a tax that Congress had the authority to impose.
In December, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that after
Trump signed a $1.5 trillion tax cut package passed by Congress last
year that eliminated the penalties, the individual mandate could no
longer be considered constitutional.
"The taxing authority by Congress that led to the legitimate reason
for Obamacare being upheld is gone," White House aide Kellyanne
Conway told reporters on Tuesday. "We now have a mandate without a
penalty."
Conway said Obamacare had not been a "magic elixir" since more than
27.4 million non-elderly individuals in the United States were
without health insurance in 2017, according to the Henry J. Kaiser
Family Foundation.
A group of 17 mostly Democratic-led states including California and
New York on Monday argued in court papers that the law was
constitutional because the individual mandate is a "lawful choice
between buying insurance or doing nothing."
About 11.8 million consumers nationwide enrolled in 2018 Obamacare
exchange plans, according to the U.S. government's Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services.
(Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston and Amanda Becker and Alexandra
Alper in Washington; additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Susan
Cornwell; Editing by Bill Trott and Jonathan Oatis)
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