President Trump said he believes the Supreme Court will uphold a federal judge’s decision declaring Obamacare unconstitutional and Democrats and Republicans will work together on a new healthcare plan for the country.
“We should win at the Supreme Court, where this case will go,” Trump said of last month’s ruling in Texas v. Azar during a televised Cabinet meeting Wednesday afternoon. “When we do, we will sit down with the Democrats and we will come up with great healthcare.”
Trump said that a potential new healthcare plan would be “far better” than the existing one, in which “the deductible is so high, unless you get hit by a tractor, you can’t even use it. … Obamacare is a tremendous failure.” Trump has previously repeatedly bashed the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, but has not provided any specific details on a viable alternative.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor oversaw the proceedings in the Texas v. Azar case, brought by 20 Republican state officials who asked for Obamacare to be thrown out in response to the “individual mandate” policy, a new tax law which zeroed out a penalty on the uninsured. The officials argued that the penalty was central to remaining medical policies.
In his ruling, O’Connor said that Obamacare would not have passed in Congress without the mandate to begin with. He ultimately ruled Obamacare unconstitutional, but has allowed it to stay in place during further appeals, saying “many everyday Americans would otherwise face great uncertainty.”
The appeals process is being led by Democratic states and is expected to reach the Supreme Court as partisan battles over the nation’s healthcare plan continue. In the first two years of his presidency, Trump has appointed two justices to the nation’s highest court — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — and appears to be counting on that to work in his administration’s favor. However, the court, despite a heavier conservative presence on its bench, denied his administration’s request last month to enforce a new policy prohibiting asylum for migrants who illegally cross the southern border, a decision seen as a major blow to the president.
Democrats, meanwhile, are proposing a major healthcare overhaul as they prepare for the possibility of a post-Obamacare era. Dubbed “Medicare 50,” the new plan would allow people to enroll in Medicare beginning at age 50.
