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Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh launched a counterattack Thursday to save the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a Texas federal judge contemplates killing it.
Frosh sued the federal government in a Greenbelt, Maryland, court seeking a declaratory judgment that the ACA is constitutional and a court order barring the U.S. from taking any action inconsistent with that conclusion.
The Maryland suit lands one week after the Trump administration told Fort Worth federal judge Reed O'Connor it has no qualms about his striking down the act, only that doing so too quickly could unleash "chaos." Twenty Republican-led states sued in Texas arguing the health care law became unconstitutional when Congress repealed the "individual mandate," or the tax penalty the ACA imposes on many people who fail to have what the government classifies as minimum qualifying coverage.
The Affordable Care Act is constitutional even without the tax penalty, Frosh argued in his lawsuit. Overturning the law "would throw millions off health insurance rolls by reversing Medicaid expansion, ending tax credits that help people," and empower insurers to once again deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, Frosh said in a statement announcing the filing.
