House Democrats backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi are unveiling legislation to shore up the Affordable Care Act, trying to deliver on campaign promises about health care.
But it's also a messaging shift as Democrats want to show they care about policy issues beyond special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report.
Pelosi's office says the bill being unveiled Tuesday would make more middle-class people eligible for subsidized health insurance while increasing aid for those with lower incomes who already qualify.
The bill would provide money to help health insurers pay for their costliest patients and restore advertising and outreach budgets slashed by President Donald Trump's administration.
The bill will get a vote in the House, but as a package it has no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate.
ORIGINAL STORY:
The Trump administration says it wants the entire Affordable Care Act struck down. In turn, 21 Attorneys General including Nevada have filed an opening brief in the federal case.
The brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, argues that every provision of the ACA remains valid. It also details the harm that declaring the ACA invalid would have on the tens of millions of people who rely on this program for access to affordable healthcare, as well as the broader effect it would have on the nation’s healthcare system.
“Defending the Affordable Care Act means defending 133 million Americans, including 17 million kids with preexisting health conditions,” said Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford. “My office joins 20 other states taking a legal stand to ensure our residents, including hundreds of thousands of Nevadans, have accessible and affordable health care.”
The plaintiffs, two individuals and 18 states led by Texas, filed this lawsuit in February 2018, challenging one provision of the Affordable Care Act—the requirement that individuals maintain health insurance or pay a tax. Texas’ lawsuit came after Congress reduced that tax to zero dollars in December 2017. Opponents of the ACA had attempted and failed to repeal the ACA over 70 times since its instatement. The plaintiffs argued that this change made the minimum coverage provision unconstitutional. They further argued that the rest of the ACA could not be “severed” from that one provision, so the entire Act must be struck down.
In addition to Nevada, the following states and territories are included in the brief: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai'i, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont and Washington.
In a filing Monday with a federal appeals court in New Orleans, the administration said the entire law should be struck as unconstitutional. It's rare for the Justice Department to decline to defend a federal law.
Previously, President Donald Trump's administration had called only for parts of the law to go.
The Justice Department is expected to elaborate on its position in a brief. In a letter, it said the appeals court should affirm a December decision by a federal judge in Texas. The judge ruled that Congress' elimination of penalties for not buying health insurance rendered the law unconstitutional.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
Let me be clear: if the ACA were completely dismantled, it would have disastrous and sweeping consequences for Nevada’s entire health care system and leave hundreds of thousands of Nevadans twisting in the wind. 1/5
— Governor Sisolak (@GovSisolak) March 26, 2019
I will continue working with @NevadaAG to exercise all legal options available to protect the health care of Nevadans. 5/5
— Governor Sisolak (@GovSisolak) March 26, 2019
