Lost another Obamacare legal battle

Trump administration suffers another Obamacare blow in court

By PAUL DEMKO

The Trump administration has lost another Obamacare legal battle — its second this week — just as the president has revived his drive to destroy and replace the 2010 health law.

A federal judge ruled late Thursday in Washington that the administration’s efforts to expand the availability of health plans that don’t meet the coverage rules of the Affordable Care Act is a deliberate and illegal “end run“ around the federal health care law. The ruling addressed insurance known as “Association Health Plans,” which cost less than many Obamacare plans but can also provide fewer health benefits.

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, comes just one day after another federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s embrace of work requirements for people on Medicaid, concluding that those new rules in Kentucky and Arkansas violate the program’s primary goal of delivering health care coverage to low-income Americans.

Medicaid work requirements and expanding coverage options outside Obamacare rules have been linchpins of the Trump administration’s approach to health care. The president and top officials have argued that such changes are necessary to bring relief to Americans who are suffering under the stringent rules and costs of the ACA. Several other Trump health policies are facing legal challenges.

The legal setbacks also come as Trump has made a high-stakes gamble by vowing another effort to dismantle Obamacare, which he called “an absolute disaster.“ The administration roiled the health care industry earlier this week by siding with a federal judge who ruled in December that the entire ACA, which was enacted nearly a decade ago, is unconstitutional and must be tossed. That was a reversal of the Department of Justice’s earlier position, that only a portion of the law should be struck.

“You watch, we are going to be the party of great health care,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “The Democrats have let you down. They’ve really let you down. Obamacare doesn’t work.“

The Trump administration’s moves infuriated many Republican lawmakers, still smarting from failed repeal efforts in 2017. They would prefer to attack Democrats for efforts to pass “Medicare for All," which they deride as socialized medicine that will eliminate all private insurance coverage.

Democrats won control of the House in 2018 in large part by pillorying Republicans for trying to jettison a law that has provided coverage to an estimated 20 million Americans, even though the GOP couldn’t reach agreement on what should come next.

The Trump administration’s efforts to expand the availability of association health plans sparked a lawsuit by 11 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, who argued that the regulations violated federal law and must be scrapped.

“We are pleased that the District Court saw past the Trump Administration’s transparent effort to sabotage our health care system and gut these critical consumer protections in the service of its own partisan agenda,” New York Attorney General Tish James, one of the parties to the suit, said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear if the administration would appeal.