Senior Justice Department attorney quits after Sessions rescinds defense of Obamacare

[DonViejo]

Source: Axios



Khorri Atkinson 9 hours ago

A senior attorney at the Justice Department has resigned in response to the agency's decision last week not to defend the Affordable Care Act in court because it believes the individual mandate provision is unconstitutional, the Washington Post reports, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The details: Joel McElvain, who reportedly has been working at the Justice Department for more than 20 years, tendered his resignation on Friday — the day Attorney General Jeff Sessions informed congressional lawmakers about his decision on Obamacare. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the provision in 2012, and the Trump administration's move has roll back years of legal work McElvain carried out on this issue. The individual mandate requires most people to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty.

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Read more: https://www.axios.com/senior-attorney-quits-after-admin-stops-defending-key-obamacare-provisions--1bb1bbb1-c40b-43aa-be9a-eee64915281a.html?utm_source=sidebar

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Sam Baker 3 hours ago

Republicans aren't loving the latest ACA lawsuit

The Trump administration's latest effort to eliminate the Affordable Care Act's protections for pre-existing conditions is opening a rift among Republicans, and even within the executive branch.

Between the lines: Congressional Republicans seem to just now be waking up to the fact that the Trump administration has boxed them into a new round of questions about whether the party wants to guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Not messing around: "The Justice Department argument in the Texas case is as far-fetched as any I’ve ever heard. Congress specifically repealed the individual mandate penalty, but I didn’t hear a single senator say that they also thought they were repealing protections for people with pre-existing conditions," Sen. Lamar Alexander said in a statement.

Azar punts: HHS Secretary Alex Azar tried to duck the issue yesterday as he testified before the Senate HELP Committee, which Alexander chairs.

more
https://www.axios.com/republicans-dont-love-aca-lawsuit-01d9080e-4f52-48b6-903e-c3ab995afa73.html

[bucolic_frolic]

1. "Life is a pre-existing condition"

Where freedom precludes taxes and social welfare.

Basically these nut jobs are trying to make property rights and gun rights primary to all other enumerated rights.

[lark]

2. Can't have reasonable costs for medical care, destroying it is part of the master plan.

Plan is:
- Destroy the ability of working class Amerians to afford medical care, including stopping Medicaid for nursing homes so millions of
elderly will be thrown out and their families have to take care of them or there will be massive deaths.
- Destroy free public education so the public is a lot more ignorant and has no idea of the rights Americans used to have
- Destroy all labor laws, including child labor laws, including overtime, so people are lots more poor and desperate
- Destroy women's ability to obtain any form of birth control whatsoever, so they get lots and lots of poor desperate workers willing to
work for next to nothing.
- Destroy our constitutional rights, probably by staging a major false flag operation in the US, suspending the constitution and drumpf
gets appointed Glorious Leader.

Up to the last bullet this has been the oligarchs plan for some time, now they have the idiot who will do exactly what they want so they let him think he's making the decisions. He's not, just following orders from Putin and Xi.