Fox News' Shannon Bream helped Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrate a federal judge's ruling that Obama is unconstitutional, thus threatening the health insurance for millions of Americans.
Yesterday, in the middle of the open enrollment period for Obamacare, a Texas judge ruled the whole Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. Fox News gave the leader of the lawsuit, Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX), a friendly platform to celebrate his victory while allowing him to shrug off the fact that millions could stand to lose health insurance as a result.
According to The New York Times, about 17 million Americans (I’m one of them) will lose their health insurance or the insurance plan available to them may be unaffordable or inadequate if the decision stands. “Insurers will also no longer have to cover young adults up to age 26 under their parents’ plans; annual and lifetime limits on coverage will again be permitted; and there will be no cap on out-of-pocket costs. Also gone will be the law’s popular protections for people with pre-existing conditions.”
Before Paxton took his victory lap, Fox News correspondent Kevin Corke reported the news from an upbeat (partisan Republican) perspective only. “Tonight, as you can well imagine, the president is celebrating a big ruling out of the state of Texas,” Corke said. He read Trump’s two gloating tweets. The second concluded, “Great news for America!” Instead of noting that it’s terrible news for many Americans, Corke read a statement from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders calling on Congress to pass new health care legislation.
However, Corke did note that the law “remains in place pending appeal.” At the end of the segment, anchor Shannon Bream noted that an appeal is on the way. He did not mention that open enrollment is still available (it ends today).
For more playing politics with other people’s health care, Bream brought on Paxton “to react to the breaking news.” By the way, if you think Paxton looks like a slimy crook, you are not alone. The current attorney general of Texas is facing several felony charges for securities fraud (he claims to be the victim of a political vendetta).
Predictably, Bream never mentioned any of those unflattering details in Paxton’s profile. Instead, she chirped that he “led a multi-state lawsuit on this and I think that you rolled it out here on Fox News @ Night!”
“Obviously, I’m celebrating with the president,” Paxton exulted. He just happened to be in Washington, D.C. that evening.
Bream did not have anyone “to react to the breaking news” representing the millions who whose health insurance is now in doubt. Nor did she encourage viewers not to let the lawsuit stop them from enrolling in Obamacare.
Instead, Bream read quotes from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) saying that if the “awful ruling” is upheld, it will be “a disaster for tens of millions of American families,” and one from Planned Parenthood saying the ruling could “gut healthcare for millions.” Without bothering to dig into the details of what Paxton et al. might have just foisted on Americans, she merely turned to him for his reaction, i.e. to let him rebut unchallenged.
“I couldn’t disagree more,” Paxton said. “The states are a whole lot better at doing this than the federal government,” he said. As if it’s no big deal to sit around without health insurance while waiting for that to be accomplished, assuming it gets accomplished.
Finally, Bream got to asking about “folks who are now worried about pre-existing conditions, who are very worried about being left with no options?”
Short answer? Not Paxton’s problem! “This is either something for Congress to fix or for individual states to fix,” he said blithely.
Bream didn’t seem to have any problem with what Paxton was prescribing for those of us who rely on Obamacare’s protections. Instead, she closed by thanking him for “walking away from a Christmas party” to share his reaction.
“Glad to be here,” he said. “Thanks for having me on. It’s a great day.”
Paxton’s trial, conveniently delayed until after his (successful) re-election effort in November, is expected in 2019.
Meanwhile, watch the naked political heartlessness below, from the December 14, 2018 Fox News @ Night.
But there is one good aspect to this viciousness. When the Pence White House is sent packing (hopefully in less than 2 years), these guys will not be able to suddenly play the “lets let bygones be bygones” game. They won’t be able to take the “I wasn’t really supporting all that hate” pose. They’ll have to live with the consequences of their hateful actions. The rest of the country and the world are under no obligation to give them a blanket forgiveness or to forget these actions.
Scrapping the mandate was always intended to do two big things. The first one was that this would effectively bankrupt the ACA over a short period of time, and thus encourage the usual Right Wing attacks about how expensive it is. The second one was a direct answer to the 2012 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the ACA on the basis of the mandate as part of Congress’ power to levy taxes. By erasing the mandate, the Right Wing was looking to also erase the only reason John Roberts supported the ACA as constitutional.
So here are the next series of steps, if we look ahead on the chess board. Sadly, the steps all lead to this decision being upheld within another year, depending on whether the Supreme Court agrees to hear it after the 5th Circuit. But first we’ll have the appeal in the 5th Circuit, which is guaranteed to uphold Judge O’Connor’s opinion and say that the ACA is effectively unconstitutional. I anticipate arguments coming before the 5th Circuit in the early spring, with a written decision coming by the summer of 2019. Once the 5th Circuit has issued their blanket support for Judge O’Connor, the appellants will immediately move on to ask the Supreme Court to hear the case.
What happens next in court depends on whether John Roberts wants to actively rule on the ACA again or if he decides to just duck and let the lower court ruling stand. I’m thinking it will probably be the latter, meaning that at some point in the early fall, the SC will simply deny cert to the appeal and end the process there. By doing this, Roberts can avoid the responsibility for the ruling and make it a situation where he’s just upholding the stability of our court system. On the other hand, Roberts could choose to hear the case, which would then certainly once again uphold O’Connor, with the judges lining up 5-4 to finally land the killing blow on the ACA. To be clear, there is NO likely scenario where this Supreme Court is going to uphold a major law from the Obama White House, particularly when the court had only supported the law due to a component that has been removed.
Given the time it takes to run these appeals through, either endgame will take until the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020 to run its course. So current enrollees in the ACA should have one more year of coverage before it’s taken away. I strongly recommend anyone currently in the exchanges to think carefully about finding alternate coverage of some kind in a year. I would not rely on the program continuing to be viable, given the open hostility shown to it by the Pence White House, the GOP Congress and now the Right Wing majority of benches in the judiciary.
I also would not rely on the divided Congress to accomplish anything regarding the ACA until after the 2020 election. The GOP has never supported having a federally managed exchange system, and many GOP congresspeople oppose the notion of helping anyone with their health insurance. I can’t imagine much of a proposal coming from the Right Wingers aside from encouraging individuals to open up tax-free Health Savings Accounts, where you save up in advance for your own health problems and maybe get a catastrophic coverage policy. As for the Dems, I can’t see them supporting anything like that – and it actually benefits Dems for the GOP to be seen as having wrecked the ACA and thrown millions of people out of their coverage. The Dems will simply use this debacle as a campaign talking point, while the GOP and the Pence White House will work overtime to try to blame the stalemate on the Dems. (This assumes that many people won’t realize that the Right Wing has never had a replacement plan for the ACA, and never wanted one.)
It’s unfortunate to see this happening, and it’s even more unfortunate to see angry Right Wingers on Fox News celebrating the end of coverage for millions. But this is a sad reality that we must face. There’s a possibility that the next White House and a new Senate in 2021 may be able to help the House take steps to start cleaning this mess up, but that depends on millions of Dems actually showing up to vote in 2020. And even if the Dems retake the White House and enough Senate seats, it will be 2022 before we can see any new programs or fixes take effect. Meaning that it will be at least 2 long years before the uncovered millions get a new option. Just as it will take until 2022 before the vicious Tax Transfer can be corrected.
I continue to fervently hope that the 2-3 million Dems who stayed home in the swing states in 2016 have learned their lesson by now.