#Trump administration urges Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare

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Executive Director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council Scott Turner speaks as U.S. President Donald Trump and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
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The Trump administration on Thursday night requested the Supreme Court overturn Obamacare.

The Justice Department argued in its filed legal brief that the Affordable Care Act has already been effectively rendered unconstitutional after Congress in 2017 passed tax legislation that removed the law’s fines for not having health insurance.

The filing comes as the nation continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic. The department did not mention the virus in its brief, but it came on the same day as the release of federal data showing nearly half of a million people signed up for healthcare coverage through the ACA during the pandemic that has cost millions of Americans their jobs.

Overturning the ACA could mean 20 million Americans would lose their health insurance, though the case will not be heard until at least the fall.

The administration in its previous legal arguments has honed in on removing provisions that block health care providers from discriminating against people based on their preexisting conditions. Though President Trump in the past has insisted Americans would still be able to find coverage no matter their medical history.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote in Thursday’s brief that if the penalty for not having coverage has been eliminated, “then it necessarily follows that the rest of the ACA must also fall.”

Federal data showed 487,000 people signed up for coverage with HealthCare.gov after losing their workplace coverage this year — an increase of 46 percent from the same time period last year.

But that figure is an undercount because it doesn’t include sign-ups from states that operate their own healthcare portals, including California and New York.

With Post wires