“If the Republicans on this case succeed in taking health care away from millions of Americans, Susan Collins owns it,” said Leslie Dach, campaign chair of Protect Our Care.
SHOT: Sen. Collins and Republicans in Congress voted for a tax bill that opened the door for 20 Republican attorneys general and governors — all of them hellbent on overturning our health care — to use to the courts to end protections for people with pre-existing conditions in a lawsuit heard by conservative U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor yesterday.
- Modern Healthcare: “O’Connor gave only cursory treatment to the baseline question of whether the individual mandate without an accompanying penalty could stand as constitutional in light of the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision to uphold the ACA through the mandate as a tax.”
- Axios: “O’Connor even wondered if this might have been Republicans’ endgame all along — that they zeroed out the mandate penalty secure in the knowledge that it could reopen the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision upholding the mandate.”
CHASER: If Judge O’Connor rules in favor of the 20 Republican state officials, Sen. Collins and every House and Senate Republican who voted for the GOP tax bill will own the consequences to the American people. And those consequences are serious. Critical Affordable Care Act protections could vanish overnight, unleashing — as the Trump Administration itself admitted — “chaos” in our entire health care system.
- 17 million more people could lose their coverage in a single year, leading to a 50 percent increase in the uninsured rate
- Protections for 130 million people with pre-existing conditions, if they buy coverage on their own, would be gone.
- The Medicaid expansion, currently covering 15 million people, could vanish.
- Improvements to Medicare, including reduced costs for prescription drugs, would be eliminated.
- No longer would kids be allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26
- Ban on annual and lifetime limits? Gone.
- Ban on insurance discrimination against women and people over age 50? Nope.
- Limits on out-of-pocket costs would be eliminated.
- Small business tax credits would be gone.
- Marketplace tax credits for up to 9 million people? Not anymore.