HOUSTON — A Texas federal judge with Houston ties has ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.
The deadline to sign up for coverage for 2019 was Saturday but many are wondering what this decision means for those covered under what is also known as “Obamacare."
More than 20 million Americans are at risk of losing their health insurance after U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.
University of Houston professor of law Seth Chandler said O’Connor made his decision based on last year’s vote by Congress to no longer penalize people who didn’t buy health insurance.
“By operation of law, by repealing this part of the Affordable Care Act, given the way it was set up, in fact Congress had repealed all 900 pages of it,” Chandler said.
Chandler believes O’Connor’s ruling will be appealed.
“It’s going to go first to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals which may well reverse the decision and I think that if it fails to do so there is a decent chance that the U.S. Supreme Court would hear it given the stakes involved," he said.
Since the dust hasn’t settled on what this ruling means, Chandler suggested people go ahead and sign up for insurance before the deadline.
“We haven’t heard any insurers say, ‘Hey, we’re not selling policies anymore,’” Chandler said. “If people want to go ahead and buy their Affordable Care Act policies I would say go ahead and do so. There’s no downside risk."
Chandler said insurance companies can now refuse to comply with some provisions of the Affordable Care Act like denying someone for preexisting conditions but he doesn’t see that happening.
He said the biggest risk of going uninsured is not signing up at all.
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