In The Fight For ACA’s Future, Which Parts Could Change?

Now that President Donald Trump's Department of Justice has decided not to defend the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act in court, what could change for the average Illinoisan should key provisions be deemed illegal?

Republican governors and attorneys general from 20 states are waging a battle with several of their Democratic counterparts in a Texas federal court saying that the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, is unconstitutional. Because the Department of Justice isn't defending the law, Democrat attorneys general from more than a dozen states have been allowed to defend the merits of the law.

Naomi Lopez-Bauman, of the Goldwater Institute, said the challenge stems from last winter's tax reform laws setting the penalty for not having insurance at zero.

"Because there's no penalty, then there's actually no tax in the Affordable Care Act," she said.

A ruling in their favor, she said, would dismantle parts of Obamacare that relate to the individual mandate.

"Anything that's tied to that could be struck down," she said.

Namely, people who receive insurance through a marketplace created by the ACA and not from an employer.

Because of the delayed nature of the legal battle (2019 is when any changes would take place and a Supreme Court opinion would be years away), the battle for Congress may well undo the case's best argument. Lopez-Bauman said that a Democrat-controlled Congress could "set the policy at a dollar, the tax would be there again."