On Dec. 14, 2018, a federal trial court judge in Texas ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. The case, brought by 20 Republican state attorneys general — including Arizona’s — makes the argument that the law’s individual mandate is unconstitutional after Congress got rid of the penalty associated with it in the 2017 tax bill. They argued that the rest of the ACA cannot be severed from the mandate and should therefore be invalidated — a position backed by the Trump administration. Seventeen Democratic state AGs are defending the ACA in an appeal many say will end up before the Supreme Court.
What hangs in the balance is health care for close to 20 million Americans. Stephanie Innes, health care reporter at The Arizona Republic, discusses the ramifications of this and other actions vis-à-vis the ACA with health care experts Swapna Reddy, clinical assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Science of Health Care Delivery, College of Health Solutions, and Colin Baillio, director of policy and communications at Health Action New Mexico.
This session is sponsored by
The Commonwealth Fund.
Room 256 - The azcentral.com classroom, located on the 2nd Floor of ASU’s
Cronkite School, 555 North Central Ave., Phoenix.
