By: Tom Howell Jr – washingtontimes.com – December 14, 2018

Obamacare is fatally flawed and should be considered null and void, a federal judge said Friday in a bombshell ruling that sides with state Republicans who argue the GOP-led Congress’ decision to gut the “individual mandate” penalty for going uninsured makes the rest of the program invalid.

The court “finds the individual mandate, unmoored from a tax, is unconstitutional,” U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor, an appointee of President George W. Bush presiding in Texas, wrote in his opinion.

The decision is a huge swipe at the 2010 law and sets the stage for a bigger fight in appeals courts. It will also reverberate on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are set to retake the House majority after running on a pro-Obamacare platform and criticizing GOP candidates who failed to devise a fallback plan if the lawsuit is tossed in the end.

Its timing is also remarkable, coming roughly 24 hours before the deadline to enroll in Obamacare-related coverage on the federal website serving much of the country.

Twenty Republican-led states had argued the Supreme Court cast Obamacare as a package deal, with the mandate to hold insurance — or else pay a tax — tethered to the law’s goodies.

Congress slashed the mandate’s tax to zero, starting in 2019, as part of its tax-cut bill. The states said the rest of the law should fall with it, including protections for people with preexisting medical conditions like cancer or diabetes.

Analysts said the ruling might cause chaos in the final hours of Obamacare enrollment but wouldn’t have an immediate effect on coverage, since the mandate penalty doesn’t shrink to zero until the new year and liberal officials will move for a stay.

The Trump administration did not defend the law in court, and sided with the states on some points. Yet it asked the judge to wait until open enrollment was complete, to avoid chaos in the markets.

But that didn’t happen.

The law’s consumer protections, subsidies and expansion of Medicaid coverage are now all at risk under the ruling, which would invalidate the entire law. The administration had suggested that only the parts of Obamacare requiring insurers to accept sicker Americans and charge them the same as healthy ones should be invalidated.

Still President Trump, who lambasted his own party for failing to repeal and replace the law as promised, applauded the decision.

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Source: Federal judge in Texas tosses Obamacare