The Democrats in the U.S House of Representatives have announced major legislation to rescue the Affordable Care Act. The announcement took place because the White House administration of Donald Trump is looking to entirely eliminate the former bill. The recent move follows new filings in a case pending before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals titled Texas v the United States. A trial court judge previously sided with the administration in voiding the law during a December ruling. The White House has now taken their calls to crush the legislation. It is commonly referred to as Obamacare.
It is expected that every piece of the bill should be removed from the law from protections for patients with pre-existing conditions to subsidies for a range of Americans seeking insurance. The Democrat bill being announced on Tuesday and it would make more middle-class people eligible for subsidized health insurance. It will increase aid for those with lower incomes who already qualify and fix a longstanding affordability issue for some consumers, known as the family glitch. It would block Trump’s administration from loosening Obamacare rules through waivers that allow states to undermine protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions or to scale back so-called essential benefits like coverage for mental health and addiction treatment.
The bill will get a vote in the House of Representatives, but it has no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate. Moreover, some elements have bipartisan support and may make it into law. Trump was elected into office promising to repeal and replace his predecessor’s health law but was unable to do so. The president remains committed to overturning Obamacare, but with the House in Democratic hands, his last hope seems to be a court challenge to the law by Texas and other Republican-led states, now before a federal appeals panel.
The White House’s efforts to completely revoke the health care bill could prove risky in the upcoming 2020 elections. Scrapping the law was a longtime campaign vow that helped sail Trump to victory in 2016, although Obamacare has only grown more popular in the years since. Millions of people continue to benefit from the bill’s taxpayer-subsidized private insurance plans, but enrolment is slowly declining and experts fear stagnation. His administration said in its most recent appellate court filing in the case that the entire law should be struck down as unconstitutional, a bolder position than it previously held. It’s rare for the Justice Department to decline to defend a federal law.