Opah
WKR
"DACA and Obamacare are still here and previous administrations said they would get rid of those and they aren’t even amendments. People just say stuff to get elected and then lobbyists continue to run the country."
Below are five of the biggest changes to the federal health law under President Trump.
What changed? The 2017 Republican-backed tax overhaul legislation reduced the penalty for not having insurance to $0.
What does the administration say? "We eliminated Obamacare's horrible, horrible, very expensive and very unfair, unpopular individual mandate. A total disaster. That was a big penalty. That was a big thing. Where you paid a lot of money for the privilege [...] of having no healthcare." — President Trump, The Villages, Florida, Oct. 3, 2019
What's the impact? First of all, getting rid of the penalty for skipping insurance opened a new avenue of attack against the entire ACA in the courts, via the Texas v. Azar lawsuit. Back in 2012, the ACA had been upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, because the penalty was essentially a tax, and Congress is allowed to create a new tax. Last December, though, a federal judge in Texas ruled that now that the penalty is $0, it's a command, not a tax, and is therefore unconstitutional. He also reasoned that it cannot be cut off from the rest of the law, so he judged the whole law to be unconstitutional.
Below are five of the biggest changes to the federal health law under President Trump.
1. Individual mandate eliminated
What is it? The individual mandate is the requirement that all U.S. residents either have health insurance or pay a penalty. The mandate was intended to help keep the premiums for ACA policies low by ensuring that more healthy people entered the health insurance market.What changed? The 2017 Republican-backed tax overhaul legislation reduced the penalty for not having insurance to $0.
What does the administration say? "We eliminated Obamacare's horrible, horrible, very expensive and very unfair, unpopular individual mandate. A total disaster. That was a big penalty. That was a big thing. Where you paid a lot of money for the privilege [...] of having no healthcare." — President Trump, The Villages, Florida, Oct. 3, 2019
What's the impact? First of all, getting rid of the penalty for skipping insurance opened a new avenue of attack against the entire ACA in the courts, via the Texas v. Azar lawsuit. Back in 2012, the ACA had been upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, because the penalty was essentially a tax, and Congress is allowed to create a new tax. Last December, though, a federal judge in Texas ruled that now that the penalty is $0, it's a command, not a tax, and is therefore unconstitutional. He also reasoned that it cannot be cut off from the rest of the law, so he judged the whole law to be unconstitutional.
Last edited:
