‘Obamacare’ likely to survive, high court arguments indicate
Associated PressWASHINGTON — A more conservative Supreme Court appears unwilling to do what Republicans have long desired: kill off the Affordable Care Act, including its key protections for pre-existing health conditions and subsidized insurance premiums that affect tens of millions of Americans. Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote two earlier opinions preserving the law, stated similar views, and the court’s three liberal justices are almost certain to vote to uphold the law in its entirety. In the court’s third major case over the 10-year-old law, popularly known as “Obamacare,” Republican attorneys general in 18 states and the administration want the entire law to be struck down. The suits are against the federal government and U.S. agencies, “but doesn’t it really seem that Congress is the one who’s injured the individual plaintiffs here and you can’t sue Congress and say: ‘Hey, you’ve put us under this mandate that’s forcing us to buy insurance and that’s harming us,’ right?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said to Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins. The arguments were not without their lighter moments, especially in an exchange between Breyer and Jeffrey Wall, Trump’s top Supreme Court lawyer, over whether the mandate that Americans “shall” have insurance means anything now that the penalty is gone.