Medical experts express concern over latest court challenge to ACA

The Trump administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Thursday night to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

According to reporting by The New York Times, the administration joined Republican officials in Texas and more than a dozen other states in arguing that the law was rendered unconstitutional after Congress removed a provision that applied a tax penalty for Americans who did not buy health insurance — known as the individual mandate.

Atheendar Venkataramani, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the division of health policy at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, told Healio Primary Care that a Supreme Court decision in favor of the Trump administration would cause dire public health consequences.

“Studies have shown that the Medicaid expansion under the ACA was associated with less uninsured people, health care improvements and financial security and even reductions in mortality from cardiovascular diseases and older individuals,” he said. “Undoing ACA would at a minimum reverse those gains.”