Obamacare is under attack by Republican judges again. Here's what's at stake.

[In It to Win It]

Vox

Judge Reed O’Connor, a former Republican Capitol Hill staffer who now sits on a federal district court in Texas, is one of the most notorious names in US health policy circles. He’s best known for a 2018 decision that attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety — before O’Connor was smacked down 7-2 by the Supreme Court.

So when a new attack on Obamacare arrived in O’Connor’s courtroom, this time on the part of the law requiring health insurers to fully cover certain preventive medical treatments, it appeared inevitable that O’Connor would deal yet another blow to the 2010 law. On Wednesday, that blow came. O’Connor’s order in Braidwood Management v. Becerra, effectively neutralizes part — but not all — of this requirement on insurers.

Yet O’Connor’s Braidwood decision is also more nuanced than his previous work suggested it would be. Though O’Connor makes a significant cut at the law, he does not go nearly as far as the conservative plaintiffs in this case urged him to go, conceding that a binding appeals court precedent prevents him from doing so.

The ACA empowers three different entities to determine which forms of preventive medical care must be covered by insurers at no additional cost to patients. O’Connor ruled that the members of one of those entities are not constitutionally permitted to wield such authority, but his opinion leaves the other two groups’ authority intact.

So, for the time being, some preventive care, like vaccines and free contraceptive care, will remain covered by insurers.

At the same time, O’Connor’s decision is likely to lead to needless health complications and preventable deaths. For one, O’Connor explicitly says that employers with religious objections may offer health plans that do not cover pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), drugs that are very effective in preventing the transmission of HIV.

Link to tweet

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. they want us dead...period

[Ron Green]

3. A single risk pool is a health care system. Multiple risk pools is an investment scheme.

We have enough investment schemes in this country; we need a health care system.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Couldn't this restriction be challenged on an equal protection argument?

You can contract HIV via blood transfusions, heterosexual sexual activity, shared needles (drug addiction). Their argument that the restriction will curtail homosexuality is spacious and outdated.