Mass AG Says Obamacare is Constitutional

yesterday on whether the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. Massachusetts was one of the states defending the law and joining me is the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healey. Thanks for joining us. General. Great to be with you, June. Will you explain the basic argument in the case? Well? Sure to provide some context. Remember, it was years ago that Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. It was challenged, the Supreme Court ruled that the a c A was constitutional.

Republican members of Congress tried seventy times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. When you saw people take to the streets and town halls and protests and ultimately they failed in the effort to repeal. Now what happened is a group of Republican state ags and governors filed a lawsuit to try this from a different angle, and that is

to challenge the a c A in court. And at the time, the Justice Department was supposed to, consistent with its constitutional duty and obligation, defend the a c A. But what's happened, unfortunately, is that the Justice Department is not defending the a c A. And a number of states like Massachusetts, California, New York, and others have joined now to defend the Affordable Care Act because it is

imperative that we keep this law in place. Lives depend on it, our health care markets depend on it, and unfortunately, this is just another effort to sabotage access to care and really read havoc with the system. When the Texas judge struck down the law in December, many legal spirits said it was an outlier decision, it wouldn't survive an appeals court. But most observers at the hearings you say that two of the three judges appeared to side with

the Republican States arguments. Well, let me say a couple of things. First, I'm not going to read much into the questions asked by the judges on the fifth Circuit. I think we need to wait to see what they're ruling is. But I agree that the District Court's decision is an outlier. In my view, it is not consistent with the law. It doesn't follow the law, and that's exactly why this matter has been appealed now to the

Fifth Circuit. I expected to go to the Supreme Court, and hopefully the Supreme Court will rule in a way that once again preserves the Affordable Care Act, because you know what this is about. It's not about anything more than politics and really trying to undo something that happened

during the Obama administration. What undoing the a c A would do is put healthcare at risk for more than a hundred thirty million Americans who have pre existing conditions who are now ensurable because of the a c A. We've got hundreds of thousands of people across this country who benefited from Medicaid expansion through the a c A who would lose that. We've got all these young people who are now covered on their parents care up through the age of twenty six who would lose access to

that care. And we've got community health centers and other providers whose funding and livelihood basically is at stake. This is about the stability of our entire insurance market, and it's also about saving lives and making sure that people across this country have access to the care they need.

That's why we're in court, that's why we're defending the a c A. I hope the Fifth Circuit rules in our favor and reverses what really is a wrongheaded decision by the District Court in Texas, and ultimately we'll be prepared to fight this all the way through to the Supreme Court. But we have got to provide access to health care. The A c A is something that is working.

It is big now into our markets, and to undo that, to sabotage this is really, I think morally wrong and problematic, but it's economically stupid and it really will set us back. So these federal judges are looking into whether the individual mandate is unconstitutional, whether the law can stand without the individual mandate. Are they taking into account what you just describe, what would happen to health care for millions of Americans

if the law is found unconstitutional? Are allowed to do that? They are, and I sure hope that that is something they look at. They also are going to look at the actual intent of Congress at the time the law was passed, and in our view and in the view of including a bipartisan group of legal scholars who filed a brief in support of our position to sending the legality of the a c A. Looking at the text

and Congress is intent. It is year that they intended this law to stand regardless of an individual mandate being in place, or regardless of a tax penalty being in place which has now been been taken away. So this is really important. And you know, June yesterday, I had an opportunity to sit with a mother whose son has a complex congenital heart defect. He's had three open heart surgeries, significant medical care that will continue to be the case

for the rest of his life. Now he's ensurable under the a c A and would be going forward because the A c A makes clear that if you're somebody with a pre existing condition, you can't be made unensurable. But if the see it goes away, so does the likelihood that this young man will be able to access health care. And that's what I mean. This is about people's lives and why a certain number of Republicans are dead set on trying to sabotage and take away access

to care. Really boggles my mind when you think about the concern and the wary that parents like this mother has to live with u now with with this challenge being placed and now being put at risk through through the litigation. Well, it seemed at the hearing yesterday that the attorney for the Justice Department struggled at different points to explain what would happen if the judges found the law unconstitutional. Does that suggest that there's no plan in place?

They can't articulate it because they don't want to articulate. The fact of the matter is it's going to result in people dying in this country. People will not have access to healthcare that have access to it now. It's also going to rehab it for employers and our health care market, our health insurance market, which by the way, is once six of the economy in this country. And so they don't want to call out the truth about what will happen. And and that's why, you know, let

me also remind folks what happened here. Justice Department was set to defend this law and then it got an instruction by Jeff Sessions and President Trump to no longer defend the law and to actually switch sides and challenge the law. Every lawyer from the Justice Department who was working on the case and prepared to defend the law was removed from the case or resigned and replaced with lawyers who are now in court. It's crazy, it's wrong, and most of all, it's illegal, and that's why we're

in court on this, and it's really a shame. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. It shouldn't be a political issue. This is about ensuring that people have access to care and that our health insurance markets are functioning. But unfortunately there's a group that just doesn't seem to care that they're putting lives at risk. Well, thank you so much for joining US General. That's Massachusetts Attorney General Maurra Healey.

Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe to listen to the show on Apple podcast, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg