One of America's Worst Judges Just Gutted a Key Part of Obamacare

[In It to Win It]

One of America's Worst Judges Just Gutted a Key Part of Obamacare

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Related: 🚨 Judge Reed O'Connor STRIKES DOWN the Affordable Care Act's preventive services mandate

One of the most important parts of the Affordable Care Act is its requirement that insurance companies cover preventive care. As we approach a full generation of people who have come of age under the protections provided by the ACA, it’s easy to forget that in the before times, it was incredibly difficult for poor people to get preventive care, and prohibitively expensive for middle-class people to do the same. That meant that a lot of times, people just had to wait to get sick before their insurance plans even kicked in. It meant that a lot of people wouldn’t get mammograms or colonoscopies. It meant a lot more “negative health care outcomes” and human suffering.

That critical and life-saving aspect of the ACA has, for now, been gutted by one man: US District Judge of the Northern District of Texas Reed O’Connor. O’Connor, who was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, is a far-right extremophile who has made it his life’s mission to destroy the ACA. He has tried to take down the act multiple times, including once when he declared the individual mandate at the heart of the law unconstitutional. And on Thursday, he fired his latest salvo against the ACA by overturning the part of the law that requires insurance companies to cover several kinds of preventive care, from cancer screenings to PrEP, the drug that prevents the transmission of HIV.

O’Connor is regularly overturned by his conservative brethren on the Supreme Court, which should give you an indication of just how far afield he is from even the standard right-wing fanatic’s interpretation of the law. But his decisions cause a lot of pain and suffering as people wait years for the Supreme Court to get around to the business of telling him that he’s wrong. O’Connor is like a guy who steals your car to take it out for a joy ride: Even if you get it back, by the time you do it’s dented and abused and it smells funny. The problem is that the “car” in this analogy is “the United States government.”

His latest decision will lead, directly, to death. O’Connor attacked the preventive care provisions of the ACA by going after the Preventive Services Task Force (PSTF). The PSTF is one of three agencies—along with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—that determine what preventive care falls under the mandatory coverage requirements of the ACA.

PSTF also mandates insurance coverage for various kinds of prenatal care. Those coverage mandates are now gone. Thanks to O’Connor and other conservative judges and justices, we now live in a world where a person can get pregnant, be forced by the state to bring that pregnancy to term against their will, but not have their prenatal care covered by their insurance company. The allegedly “pro-life” concern about the welfare of the unborn does not even extend to making sure people have access to health care during the gestational period.

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[louis-t]

1. Time for an end around.

Find a way around this asshole judge.