Last week, the Trump administration and Republican attorneys general filed their opening Supreme Court briefs in California v. Texas, their lawsuit to eliminate the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic. Editorial boards across the country denounced President Trump and his Republican allies’ attempt to destroy the ACA and their lies about maintaining protections for people with pre-existing conditions, meanwhile calling on voters to make Republican elected officials “pay at the polling places” in November.
Washington Post: Editorial: President Trump and Republicans Are the Radicals on Health Care. “The Trump Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to kill Obamacare. This has long been a foolish, foolhardy obsession for President Trump. Even in the middle of a widening pandemic, he seeks to eliminate health-care coverage for some 23 million Americans…Mr. Trump claims that he would maintain protections for people with preexisting conditions and other popular elements of Obamacare. But he has no plan to do so. His position is for health-care chaos…Mr. Trump and Republicans, not Democrats, are the health-care radicals.” [Washington Post, 6/28/20]
New York Daily News: Editorial: The GOP’s Viral Obsession: One More Attempt to Kill Obamacare. “There’s a pandemic going on, and a related economic cataclysm has rendered millions jobless and without employer-provided health insurance. So, of course, the Trump administration is doubling down on its attempt to rip up the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare…For a decade now, Republicans repeatedly sought to repeal Obamacare without offering a serious replacement — the last attempt so reckless that John McCain provided the deciding vote against it. Biden rightly called this obsession a ‘heartless crusade.’ It was always immoral. It is now also obscene.” [New York Daily News, 6/29/20]
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Editorial: The Virus and Unemployment Make Obamacare Crucial. The GOP Still Wants It Dead. “President Donald Trump has long publicly supported the effort to kill Obamacare while offering no specific program in its place for the millions of Americans who would lose their coverage…Trump, Hawley and most other elected Republicans say they want to protect people with preexisting conditions. Yet they’re barreling toward eviscerating the one such protection there is, while offering nothing to replace it. With a conservative-majority court in place, the danger is real that they could succeed. If so, America would return to a time when a diagnosis of serious illness could also become a sentence of bankruptcy. Every Republican candidate on the ballot this November who supports this twisted attack on American health care — which is virtually the whole party — should pay at the polling places.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6/27/20]
Kansas City Star: Editorial: Why Are Kansas and Missouri Trying to Kill Obamacare During the COVID-19 Pandemic? “The attorneys general in Missouri and Kansas are continuing their pointless campaign to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act — in the middle of a pandemic that has claimed more than 1,200 lives in the two states…It isn’t clear why. Are residents in either state clamoring for an end to the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic? Save for a few on the very fringe, the answer is no. Most Kansans and Missourians have come to accept the ACA and rely on the benefits it provides…Derek Schmidt of Kansas and Eric Schmitt of Missouri are wrong to pursue this case: wrong on the facts, the law, logic, politics, and the needs of hundreds of thousands of people who live in their states. They should drop the case.” [Kansas City Star, 6/29/20]
Tribune-Star: Editorial: Americans Could Get Dealt Another Uncertainty If ACA Is Ended. “On Thursday, the federal government reported that 487,000 people had signed up for ACA (or Obamacare) coverage on Healthcare.gov, up 46% from the same time in 2019. Later Thursday night, the Trump administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to end Obamacare completely. All of it. Such a decision would include erasing the protection of coverage for people with preexisting health conditions. The president keeps saying he wants such coverage to continue, but has given no clear way to make such a thing happen in the absence of Obamacare…Millions of idled American workers do not need another uncertainty, particularly one as worrisome as health care coverage, in the middle of a health crisis.” [Tribune-Star, 6/26/20]