Doug Jones: Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett could be 'torpedo' for Affordable Care Act

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones said Wednesday that a looming Supreme Court nomination could be a "torpedo" for the Affordable Care Act.

The incumbent Democrat, facing a difficult path to re-election and echoing an argument made by other members of his party, argued during a Facebook event that Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the nation’s high court, could cast the decisive vote to repeal the law in a case scheduled for arguments the week after the election.

“This is not about Roe v. Wade or guns as much as it about your health care,” Jones said on Wednesday. “This nomination is nothing more than a torpedo fired by the Trump administration to blow up the Affordable Care Act, something they could not do legislatively.”

Jones made similar comments late last month when he said he would not vote on any nominee’s confirmation before the election, saying the nomination timeframe was too compressed. Republican U.S. Senate nominee Tommy Tuberville and other Alabama Republicans, who are featuring Barrett’s nomination in their own arguments, have attacked Jones over the issue, accusing him of not doing his job.

Jones seems to welcome the argument. The ACA prevents insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The senator cited statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation, saying that 33% of the state’s population younger than age of 65 -- about 957,000 people -- had a pre-existing condition in 2018.

If the ACA was struck down, Jones said, those protections would and put the issue “back in the hands of the big insurance companies. We will be at their mercy.”

Trump and other Republicans have said that they would offer protections to those with pre-existing conditions. Tuberville, who supports repeal of ACA, said on his website that he would work to ensure “pre-existing conditions are not a deterrent to obtaining quality insurance and care,” though he does not specify what he would support. Messages seeking comment were sent to Tuberville’s campaign on Wednesday.

A replacement version of the law passed by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives in 2017 did require coverage of those with pre-existing conditions but eliminated limits on how much companies could charge those individuals. The bill failed in the Senate.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld most of the law in 2012. In 2017, Barrett wrote in an essay that Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in the case “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.”

Jones faces a major challenge in winning re-election. Alabama tends to vote Republican in federal contests. The state also has straight-ticket voting, which has boosted Republicans in the past. In 2018, 65% of ballots cast were straight-ticket; of those, nearly 60% went to the GOP.

More: Nearly two-thirds of Alabama voters chose straight-ticket option

A poll from Auburn University Montgomery released Monday found Tuberville leading Jones 54% to 42%. Jones said Wednesday he did not think it was a double-digit race, though he did not cite other polling to refute it.

“This race is moving exactly the way we want it to move,” Jones said.

More: Alabama US Senate poll: Tommy Tuberville has 12-point lead on Doug Jones

The senator has leaned into health care and the COVID-19 crisis in the closing weeks of the campaign while accusing Tuberville of being a “stalking horse” for Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Jones criticized Trump on Thursday for ending negotiations over a second COVID-19 stimulus bill, saying he wanted to provide relief for businesses and local governments that may be laying off workers.

The senator also said he wanted a broad relief package with multiple areas of relief. He said a $2.2 trillion relief package approved by the U.S. House last week provided a framework for negotiations, though he stopped short of endorsing it Wednesday. But Jones also said he did not want a “piecemeal” relief package.

“I don’t think it would be appropriate to allow the president of the United States to pick and win losers in this,” he said.

The senator also criticized former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Jones’ predecessor in the seat, for comments reported in a U.S. Department of Justice inspector general’s report. According to The New York Times, Sessions told prosecutors who objected to an order to prosecute undocumented immigrants, even if it meant family separations, that “we need to take away the children.” Attempts to reach Sessions via associates on Wednesday were not immediately successful.

Jones called the remarks “horrible.”

"It is so inconsistent with the values of the people of Alabama,” Jones said. “It is so inconsistent with the Christian values they pretend to support."

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brian Lyman at 334-240-0185 or blyman@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Doug Jones: Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett could be 'torpedo' for Affordable Care Act

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