Federal judge appears hesitant to block Trump Obamacare alternatives

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The Trump administration argued in district court Tuesday that it was allowed to let people buy short-term plans outside of Obamacare's rules because they'd done little to disrupt the market and had been allowed for most of Barack Obama's tenure.

Throughout the oral arguments, D.C. District Court Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of George W. Bush, raised these same arguments, even before the Trump administration presented its position.

"What's going on here is nothing more than a status quo of what was going on before," Leon said. By the end of the hearing, he said that he "a lot to chew on" and that he hoped to issue a ruling by the summer.

At the center of the lawsuit, filed in September by patient groups, are short-term health insurance plans that the Trump administration has promoted as an alternative to Obamacare, which can be prohibitively expensive for people who don't qualify for subsidies. The administration allows people to buy the short-term plans for just under 12 months and then to renew for a total of three years. In extending the short-term plans, the administration overturned a rule the Obama administration implemented in April 2016 that shortened the time people were allowed to have the plans from 364 days to three months.

The plaintiffs, including patient groups representing people with HIV/AIDS, cancer, and mental illness, sued, saying that people with serious chronic issues would not have access to medical care. Attorney Charles Rothfeld, who represented the plaintiffs in court on Tuesday, said that the Trump administration was undermining Congress' will in the Affordable Care Act to provide "meaningful, adequate insurance" that would not turn away sick people or charge them more than healthy people and that would cover a range of medical care.
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