Five cities—Columbus, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Philadelphia—are taking Trump to court for unconstitutionally sabotaging the Affordable Care Act. While the Administration’s most recent legal filing tried to ignore the many ways its own actions have driven up healthcare costs throughout the country, that’s a reality the Trump Administration can’t escape. We and the cities and the people we represent have seen the effects of Trump’s sabotage, and so have members of Congress.

In responses to the State of the Union and as part of the multiple Congressional hearings related to the ACA, members of Congress have highlighted how the Trump Administration has sabotaged the Affordable Care Act and made health care more expensive.

 

In a House Appropriations hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro put it clearly: “One has to take a very, very hard look at what the Administration’s policies have been over the last several years in being a driver of increased cost.”

In that same hearing, Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler acknowledged that, since Trump had been unsuccessful in his repeal attempts, the ACA remained “the law of the land.” This is a key part of our lawsuit: since the Constitution requires that the President “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” the Administration’s actions to undermine the ACA violate that duty.

We know that this aggressive undermining of Americans’ health care is more than accidental. Documents we uncovered show that the Trump Administration was told that cutting advertising for HealthCare.gov would cause 100,000 fewer people to enroll, but as Get America Covered’s Joshua Peck testified in the Appropriations hearing, they made the cuts anyway.

Emails Show Trump Administration Was Told ObamaCare Ad Cuts Could Hurt Enrollment
HuffPost

Dr. Aviva Aron-Dine, Vice President for Health Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, made sure to offer solutions in her Congressional testimony but also diagnosed the problem, and traced it back to the Administration’s actions:

“Short term plans and some of the other Administration actions take us back in the direction of that pre-ACA market. I think the better place to go to help the unsubsidized people would be first to reverse Administration actions that have raised sticker price premiums, like short term plans.”

From pushing short-term, junk plans to cutting advertising to sowing uncertainty in the market, the Trump Administration continues to violate its duty under the Constitution to faithfully execute the ACA. As our lawsuit proceeds, we’re glad to see that oversight into the Administration’s unlawful actions will continue:

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