Jost: Court Decision to Invalidate the Affordable Care Act Would Affect Every American
On Friday—the eve of the final day of the 2019 open-enrollment period—Texas federal court Judge Reed O’Connor delivered a judgment purporting to accomplish what Republicans in Congress had failed to do and what the Supreme Court had twice refused to do: invalidate the Affordable Care Act.
As legal expert Timothy S. Jost explains in a new To the Point post, the ruling finds that because the 2017 tax cut act reduced the individual mandate penalty amount to zero, the individual requirement to have health insurance is no longer valid as a tax and is entirely unconstitutional, as is the rest of the ACA.
“The logic of Judge O’Connor’s decision is simple and straightforward, but clearly wrong,” says Jost, who adds that virtually all Americans would be affected if the decision were upheld.
According to Jost, the decision will be appealed and likely blocked from going into effect. Nevertheless, it could still cause “untold confusion.”
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