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Ohio, a state with a red-hot presidential battleground, is opposed to a lawsuit that would invalidate Obamacare, highlighting the difficulty it faces in trying to resurrect the problem for the campaign.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, said the success of this lawsuit would cause unacceptable harm to his state.
President Trump, who won Ohio in 2016 and can not afford to lose him in 2020, defines his reelection in part as a referendum on the Affordable Care Act. The law was signed by President Barack Obama nine years ago, after clearing Congress without a single GOP vote.
"We have 1.9 million non-elderly Ohio residents who have pre-existing conditions. If this exercise of judicial activism in Texas holds, it will have an impact on my condition. These people will end up without insurance coverage for these pre-existing conditions, "Yost said. Washington Examiner. "This is how I explain it to people: we have a tumor, the patient has a tumor, we cut the tumor; you do not kill the patient. "
A group of Republican-led states, represented primarily by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed a lawsuit last year in federal court and was successful in ruling that the mandate to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional and that it was therefore necessary to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act down. The law remained in effect while waiting for appeals. If the Supreme Court intervenes, it may not happen before the 2020 elections.
Republicans in Congress have effectively abandoned Obamacare's attempts to repeal. Their position against it allowed the Republican seats to be waived in a mid-term election that cost them their majority in the House. Fearing a new reaction, they told Trump that they would not consider a bill to repeal Obamacare before the next election. Instead, Republicans are focused on defending the popular components of the law.
That's what Yost does.
Yost, 62, was elected Attorney General last year in a midterm election for Republicans in Ohio that is less severe than anywhere else. But even in a state that is mostly pro-Trump, Yost has refused to sign a lawsuit to overturn Obamacare as the president will present himself primarily in 2020. Instead, Yost has filed an amicus brief against the 39, legal action. This is a great example of how the Obamacare policy has changed.
Yost, conceding that "not everyone is happy" with his decision to break with Trump, said Ohio would not join the counter-suit brought by a coalition of Democratic states. In addition, the Attorney General agrees with the portion of the dispute launched by Texas that the individual insurance purchase mandate is unconstitutional, but not that its unconstitutionality has rejected the law in his outfit.
"There is a lot of support to let your children on your insurance until you're 26 years old. Abroad, you have protection against pre-existing diseases, "he said. "I did not join the democrats" [countersuit]. But I do not agree with [a lot of] Republicans, either. "
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