A federal judge on Thursday struck down a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, jeopardizing free coverage of a wide range of preventive services including mammograms, colonoscopies and mental health screenings for nearly 168 million people on employer health insurance and on Obamacare’s individual market.
District Court Judge Reed O’Connor, the author of several previous rulings against Obamacare, sided with conservative employers and individuals in Texas who argued that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that set those requirements has been acting unconstitutionally since 2010. The decision blocks enforcement of the rules nationwide.
O’Connor, a President George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, also ruled that the requirement to cover the HIV prevention drug PrEP violated the religious rights of the employers and could not be enforced against them.
The employers and individuals had standing to sue, O’Connor wrote, because “compulsory coverage for those services violates their religious beliefs […]
Some people are like my parents used to be: just voting Republican because that is what they always did, not because they actually listened to what those Republicans believed in or what they would vote for. They were so stupid, I cannot believe they were my parents. They hated me so much that they did not even have life insurance to help me pay their funeral expenses or have a little to live on in my old age. That’s why I am suffering now.