Blue State Attorneys General Win Important Obamacare Court Battle Against Trump Administration
Trump wants to take away patient subsidies, Democratic states are fighting to stop him.
Democratic Attorneys General can defend patient subsidy payments to insurance companies, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled on Tuesday.
According to Reuters, the Court of Appeals granted a motion filed by 16 attorneys general and led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
The subsidy payments are a critical part of the Obamacare marketplace which ensures low and middle-income Americans can afford insurance.
Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut off those payments which are paid upfront to insurance companies on behalf of the patients.
According to Reuters, “The order issued by the three-judge panel, all Obama appointees, said the states had shown ‘a substantial risk that an injunction requiring termination of the payments at issue here … would lead directly and imminently to an increase in insurance prices, which in turn will increase the number of uninsured individuals for whom the states will have to provide health care.'”
The order went on to say, “In addition, state-funded hospitals will suffer financially when they are unable to recoup costs from uninsured, indigent patients for whom federal law requires them to provide medical care.”
New York Attorney Eric Schneiderman issued a statement following the decision saying, “The court’s decision is good news for the hundreds of thousands of New York families that rely on these subsidies for their health care. It’s disturbingly clear that President Trump and his administration are willing to treat them as political pawns.”
[image via Twitter]
