In difficulty in polls , Donald Trump wants to re-mobilize his electorate and end the flagship measure of the Obama era. The President asked the Supreme Court to repeal the Obamacare, health system reform which helped expand health coverage in the United States.
An hour before the deadline allowing the judges to seize the files for the next session, the White House sent an 82-page document in which it joined Texas and 17 other states, which also claim to reconsider this law. Their main argument: the law would be unconstitutional because in 2017, Congress, then controlled by the Republicans, had canceled one of the provisions, which provided for a tax penalty for those who did not take out health insurance.
The main campaign topic
The Supreme Court has already examined the Obamacare (or Affordable Care Act) twice, but each time decided to leave the law almost intact. Repeatedly since Donald Trump’s arrival at the White House, Republicans have also attempted to unravel this legacy. Without achieving a majority . However, the situation could change: the Supreme Court has clearly fallen into the conservative camp since the appointment by Donald Trump of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh .
The judges could receive the arguments of the two camps in the fall, in the middle of the presidential campaign. Health was already the main issue in the debate before the coronavirus crisis. And the pandemic has made the subject even more sensitive. Mass layoffs have caused their health coverage to be lost to more than 20 million Americans (out of the 160 million who have health insurance through their employer).
Covid-19: another record day
A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that with the crisis, many employers could take away their health benefits from their employees. A total of 50 million Americans are at risk. The Obamacare law returned 23 million people who were not covered in the health system.
Republicans are themselves divided on the advisability of putting the subject back on the table while the country is fighting, more than ever, against the pandemic. The Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, spoke of an “act of unfathomable cruelty”. On Thursday, the country recorded nearly 40,000 new cases of Covid-19, the absolute record since the start of the pandemic.
If the number of victims is decreasing and if certain homes, like New York, New Jersey or Michigan, see the number of cases decline, other states, mainly Texas, Arizona and Florida, are struggling with a strong upsurge of the epidemic.
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