Sabotaging the ACA

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Judge Reed O’Connor, a former Republican Capitol Hill staffer who now sits on a federal district court in Texas, is one of the most notorious names in US health policy circles. He’s best known for a 2018 decision that attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety — before O’Connor was smacked down 7-2 by the Supreme Court.
So when a new attack on Obamacare arrived in O’Connor’s courtroom, this time on the part of the law requiring health insurers to fully cover certain preventive medical treatments, it appeared inevitable that O’Connor would deal yet another blow to the 2010 law. On Wednesday, that blow came. O’Connor’s order in Braidwood Management v. Becerra, effectively neutralizes part — but not all — of this requirement on insurers...

O’Connor’s decision is likely to lead to needless health complications and preventable deaths. For one, O’Connor explicitly says that employers with religious objections may offer health plans that do not cover pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), drugs that are very effective in preventing the transmission of HIV. And if O’Connor’s decision stands, it is likely to force at least some health care consumers to pay out of pocket for cancer screenings that otherwise would have been covered by their insurer, potentially causing patients to delay those screenings until it is too late. (Though it should be noted that O’Connor has not yet issued an injunction against the law, so Obamacare remains in full effect, for the moment.)

Moreover, it is likely that higher courts will make more expansive attacks on the Affordable Care Act as this case is appealed. O’Connor may have stayed his hand somewhat because he was bound by an appeals court’s precedent. But neither the conservative US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit nor the Supreme Court — where Republican appointees have a 6-3 supermajority — are necessarily going to heed that precedent. And the plaintiffs raise just the kind of argument that could entice the Supreme Court to upend the preventive care requirements altogether.

Obamacare is under attack by GOP judges again. Here’s what’s at stake in Braidwood Management v. Becerra. - Vox

• Still difficult to get one's head around the fact of these rightwingers efforts to do away with healthcare coverage and in this case, preventive care.
  
• Ideology kills again..