Texas Democrats say state must take action if Obamacare struck down

Texas Democrats said Friday that if a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act is successful, state lawmakers might be forced to address gaps in coverage, possibly in a special legislative session since the next regular session isn't scheduled to take place until 2021.

Federal appeals court judges seemed skeptical of the law's constitutionality during oral arguments in the case last week.

"If we don't get relief from the courts, we do find ourselves in a crisis situation that does merit an emergency session," state Rep. Celia Israel, D-Austin, said at an event Friday in Austin organized by the Texas Democratic Party "to discuss the devastating consequences if the Affordable Care Act is struck down."

Gov. Greg Abbott has the authority to call a special session and sets the agenda.

The fate of the 2010 law, known as Obamacare, which covers about 1 million Texans and millions more across the country, remains uncertain. The lawsuit to overturn it, which was filed in February 2018 by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and officials from 17 other GOP-led states, awaits a ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, agreed with his House colleague that "action ought to be taken" but emphasized a different approach: elect "people who will not put people at risk."

Democratic U.S. Reps. Lloyd Doggett of Austin and Veronica Escobar of El Paso also spoke at the event held at a Texas AFL-CIO auditorium. Doggett called the lawsuit "collusion ... between an indicted Republican attorney general and the Trump administration to destroy the protections that so many Texans and so many Americans rely on."

In response to the event, Paxton said in a statement, "There is only one pre-existing condition at issue in our case: the cancer of federal overreach that is killing our Constitution. This case is not about pre-existing conditions and congressional Democrats know that. But they also know that it is easier to engage in political stunts than to work with the Senate and the president to find real, constitutional solutions that will decrease costs and facilitate better access to healthcare."

Paxton, who leads the coalition of states taking on the law, has centered his arguments against it around President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts. With those tax cuts, Congress eliminated the Affordable Care Act's tax penalty for Americans who chose to remain uninsured. But Paxton, maintaining that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in 2012 because the penalty was a proper use of congressional taxing authority, said that, with the penalties gone, the whole piece of legislation needs to fall.

A federal judge in Fort Worth agreed with Paxton and ruled in December that the entire act was unconstitutional. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, leading a coalition of 20 Democratic states and joined by the U.S. House, asked the 5th Circuit Court to overturn the ruling, arguing that Congress has the authority to encourage people to buy health insurance without imposing a tax penalty. In addition, he argued, the individual mandate remains a tax provision that Congress left on the books but which does not, for the moment, generate tax revenue.

The federal appeals court has no deadline to make a decision. The losing side will be able to appeal to the Supreme Court, which has ruled in favor of the law twice already. If the Supreme Court takes the case, a decision could come in June 2020 -- in the thick of the presidential campaign.

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