A federal appeals court wrestled in oral arguments on Tuesday with a Biden administration request that it pause a judge’s ruling that would wipe away an Obamacare mandate requiring certain preventive care services – including statins and some cancer screenings – to be provided at no cost.
The ruling, from US District Judge Reed O’Connor, in the latest conservative legal attack against the 2010 Affordable Care Act, is on hold under an administrative stay while the appeals court considers whether it should be frozen long-term while the case’s appeal plays out.
During a 45-minute hearing before the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, a Justice Department attorney argued thatif O’Connor’s ruling were allowed to take full effect, it would cause “enormous harms” to the 150 million people whose insurance plans may be impacted if their insurers end the no-cost coverage of the services in question.
“These preventive services are meant to be gotten early so that you detect … cancer and prevent heart attacks and strokes and … all of these things,” DOJ attorney Alisa Klein said. “The reason Congress said, ‘you’ve got to cover all these services without cost sharing’ is to get people to get them in a timely fashion, so they don’t get the disease at a point where their survival rates are much lower.”
The lawyer for the businesses and individuals challenging the Affordable Care Act mandate argued that the administration is overplaying the harms that would occur if O’Connor’s ruling was not frozen for the appeal. Attorney Jonathan Mitchell – a former Texas solicitor general who was the architect of Texas’ civil enforcement six-week abortion ban – said it was not even clear that insurers would drop the no-cost coverage of the services in response to O’Connor’s ruling.
Multiple judges on the panel wondered…
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