A main driver for passing and implementing the Affordable Care Act was to ensure that people with pre-existing health conditions could buy health insurance. Prior to the ACA- people with pre-existing medical conditions like diabetes faced real challenges getting health insurance.
Indeed, one of the most consistently popular parts of the ACA are the provisions that help people get coverage regardless of health status. The ACA prevents health insurance companies from denying someone a policy because they have a preexisting condition (called the “guaranteed issue” requirement), refusing to cover services that people need to treat a pre-existing condition (called “preexisting condition exclusions”), or charging a higher premium based on a person’s health status (called the “community rating” provision).
You can think of pre-existing conditions exclusions, guarantee issue, and community rating as the three legs of the ACA stool. Despite these largely popular provisions, there are people that want to knock over the stool. Back in February, 20 states (including Arizona) filed a lawsuit in Texas federal court seeking to invalidate the 3 legs of the stool: preexisting condition exclusions, community rating, and guaranteed issue.
This most recent legal attack argues that the removal of the individual mandate penalty by the most recent federal tax cut legislation makes the ACA unconstitutional (the US Supreme Court upheld the ACA several years ago, in part, because the tax penalty provision provided a statutory hook for the ACA to rest on). The lawsuit argues that because the mandate is an essential feature of the ACA, the rest of the law must be struck down too. If the lawsuit eventually succeeds these central provisions of the ACA would go away and an estimated 17 million people could become uninsured again.
During the Obama Administration, the federal government defended the ACA from lawsuits like these. Those days are over. A couple of months ago, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that they agree with the plaintiff States that the ACA’s individual mandate is unconstitutional. The administration urged the court to strike down the law’s guaranteed issue, preexisting condition exclusion, and community rating provisions.
Prior to the ACA, standards to protect people with preexisting conditions were primarily determined at the state level. Most states including AZ had very limited protections. Before the ACA, many insurers maintained lists of up to 400 different conditions that disqualified applicants from insurance or resulted in higher premiums. 35% of people who tried to buy insurance on their own were either turned down by an insurer, charged a higher premium, or had a benefit excluded from coverage because of their preexisting health problem.
If the Federal courts (ultimately the US Supreme Court probably) rule in favor of the plaintiffs, States could still play as a regulator of insurance, as they could enact and enforce their own laws to protect residents from discrimination due to preexisting conditions. In fact, several states already have their own laws to incorporate some or all of the ACA’s protections (Arizona does not).
Oral arguments have been scheduled for next week in the Texas lawsuit. Arguments are scheduled to take place next Monday before Judge Reed O’Connor. Whatever the Federal TX Court rules, the result will likely be appealed to the UA Appellate Court and eventually probably the US Supreme Court.
