With Obamacare's fate in Supreme Court's hands, electing Biden is a no-brainer

The Supreme Court announced this week when it will hear the consolidated cases on the Affordable Care Act. California v. Texas basically challenges whether the plaintiffs in Texas v. California have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law, as well as the actual constitutionality of the law. The ‘when’ is interesting: Nov. 10, exactly one week after the election. To think that the conservative court majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, did not have the election in mind when scheduling this is to be very charitable to the Roberts court. At the very least, the chief justice does not want to be accused of trying to sway the election either way by having arguments beforehand.

There's little question that for the majority of Americans who want the ACA to either be kept as is or expanded to do more, this issue is going to remain a key consideration, and Trump's attacks on it will be key, too. Democratic nominee Joe Biden spoke to the threat Trump poses in his acceptance speech Thursday night: "[T]he assault on the Affordable Care Act will continue until its destroyed, taking insurance away from more than 20 million people—including more than 15 million people on Medicaid—and getting rid of the protections that President Obama and I passed for people who suffer from a preexisting condition."

In his speech, Biden called for building on the ACA to lower premiums, deductibles, and prescription drug prices aspart of his policy proposals. While plenty of progressives (like the one writing this) will argue that doesn't go nearly far enough to reform the nation's healthcare system, it's hard to argue that it would be infinitely better to take those cautious steps forward than to let Trump continue to destroy everything. We have the fights about how far and how fast it’s expanded with the president we elect this fall, the only one we can have any sway over. It’s not an exaggeration, by the way, to say Trump  would destroy health care for who knows how long. He has no capacity to create a replacement for the ACA. Neither do the rest of the Republicans, and they've had a full decade to try to come up with one.

We will be left after this pandemic with millions of people who have a new preexisting condition, having had coronavirus. Those millions of people will need at the very least the protections that the ACA provides to obtain and retain health care coverage. The economic devastation from the Trump virus is going to mean Medicaid has to remain available for the millions who don't have the option of private insurance.

Whatever the Supreme Court ultimately ends up deciding, it's clear that the only choice on health care is Biden. The Kaiser Family Foundation helps make that case, with this slideshow of side-by-side comparisons of Biden's plans and Trump's ramblings on everything from the opioid crisis to long-term care. There's simply no comparison.

from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/31gtL6G