Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

[Thread] BREAKING: The biggest health care news of the year.

The Trump DOJ tonight just told the courts to dismantle pre-existing conditions protections and other consumer protections.

This may seem predictable, but these actions are unprecedented.

The DOJ, responsible for upholding the rule of law, is not defending the people in a frivolous lawsuit to say that wi5out the mandate, the rest of the ACA can’t be enforced.

This collusion between the conservative plaintiffs and the “defense” would make pre-ex protections and age rating protections unconstitutional.

[Thread] Here's the brief. As expected. The Justice Department believes the crucial insurance reforms of the Affordable Care Act are unconstitutional and will not defend them. This is an enormous blow to the integrity of DOJ. https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ACA.Azar_.filing.pdf

The Justice Department doesn't think an injunction is immediately warranted. But on no uncertain terms, it argues that the federal courts should invalidate the crucial operative provisions of the ACA.

I am at a loss for words to explain how big of a deal this is. The Justice Department has a durable, longstanding, bipartisan commitment to defending the law when non-frivolous arguments can be made in its defense. This brief torches that commitment.

Pick your adjective. The arguments that the plaintiffs have offered in favor of their argument that the penalty-free mandate requires striking down the whole statute are silly. Laughable. Ridiculous. Unprincipled. And yet --

THREAD: According to the HHS Dept., appx. 130 MILLION non-elderly Americans have pre-existing conditions which would likely get them either denied coverage or charged so much for coverage they’d be effectively priced out of the market. 1/

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Late yesterday afternoon, something remarkable—perhaps unprecedented—happened at the Department of Justice. In Texas v. United States, No. 18-167 (N.D. Tex.)—a suit brought by 18 states, two governors and two private individuals, seeking an injunction against the operation of the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA)—three of the four attorneys representing the United States from DOJ’s Federal Programs Division, including an Assistant Branch Director (Joel McElvain) and a Senior Counsel (Eric Beckenhauer), moved to withdraw from the case, leaving from Federal Programs only the politically appointed head of the Section, Brett Shumate (who filed an appearance on Tuesday) and a line attorney who was hired only a few weeks ago (Daniel Mauler, who entered an appearance earlier yesterday).

As soon as this remarkable filing was made, close observers assumed that it might be a sign that the Administration could find virtually no career FedPrograms lawyers—none who have been with the Department since before May, anyway—who were willing to file the government’s substantive brief that was due at close of business yesterday.

Perhaps such a mass withdrawal of DOJ attorneys from a case has happened before. If so, however, I am not aware of it. ...

And, sure enough, a couple of hours after the mass withdrawal motion, the government filed its brief in response to plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, which made it clear why the FedPrograms attorneys, en masse, refused to be any part of this case: The government’s brief includes not one but two arguments about the intent and effect of Congress’s amendment to ACA in December 2017 that are simply implausible—some might even say preposterous.

The Government’s Implausible Reading of the 2017 Amendment to Section 5000A, the “Individual Mandate” Provision

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]