Washington, DC – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees, released the following statement today on Supreme Court arguments in California v. Texas, a challenge to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act:
“The Republican campaign to tear down the Affordable Care Act comes before a Supreme Court packed with donor-approved justices who have signaled clearly their ill intentions for the health care law. If the justices side with the special interests propping up this attack on the ACA, Americans with pre-existing conditions, patients at risk of reaching lifetime caps on care, children on their parents’ plans, and the over 62,000 Rhode Islanders with coverage thanks to the Medicaid expansion face losing the care they need. A host of other important parts of the law – like the accountable care organizations that drive health care innovation in places like Rhode Island – would fall away, too. And we are in the midst of the most deadly public health crisis in our nation’s history, making ACA protections more important than ever. I hope the Court considers what tearing down the ACA would mean to the American people before it yields to the will of right-wing donors and special interests.”
With the constitutional challenge to the health care law before the Court, over 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions could lose protections; the law’s Medicaid expansion – covering 17 million people nationwide – could end; insurance companies could once again charge women more than men; and insurance companies could stop covering basic services like maternity care, cancer screenings, and contraception.
In September, Whitehouse joined Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) in issuing a Senate Democrats Captured Courts report on the special-interest campaign to control the federal judiciary. That campaign has targeted a tremendous amount of dark-money spending on undermining the health care law, including funding litigation against it.
