In 2010, the Democrat-controlled Congress threw out the Constitution and required nearly all Americans to buy health insurance. Despite this so-called Affordable Care Act’s obvious unconstitutionality, the Supreme Court salvaged it in 2012 by characterizing the consequences for failing to buy insurance as a permissible “tax” rather than an impermissible penalty.
In 2017, under Republican leadership, Congress eliminated that tax by reducing it to $0. Because the would-be tax no longer raises any revenue, it cannot be a “tax,” and the mandate remains nothing more than an illegal command to buy insurance.
Without that key piece of the ACA, the entire law must fall. The core of the ACA is a three-legged stool. The first leg is the individual mandate — buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. Importantly, the law itself, as reiterated by President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, deems the mandate essential to achieving the ACA’s central purposes.
The second leg is known as the guaranteed issue — insurers must accept all applicants regardless of preexisting conditions. The third is the community rating — insurers cannot charge substantially different rates because of age, sex, or health status.
Remove one leg, and the whole thing collapses.
That’s exactly what Texas argued yesterday before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case called Texas v. California.
At best, the ACA is a deeply flawed, partisan disaster that has done tremendous damage to our country and healthcare system. The three principal components alone generated skyrocketing costs and crushing regulations. At worst, it is an unprecedented exercise of raw federal power that our founders would find unconscionable.
But today, Texas is leading the way to throw out the whole Obamacare mess, and we stand ready to replace it with a State-based solution. We will return healthcare decisions back to where they should be: with individuals, families, and their doctors.
Ken Paxton is the attorney general of Texas.
