Members of the media ask questions of U.S. President Joe Biden as he walks to a Marine One helicopter for a visit to Mississippi to view the tornado damage, from the White House in Washington, U.S., March 31, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
On Friday, the Biden administration appealed a decision by a Texas federal judge to end free Obamacare coverage for preventive health care services starting from screening for certain cancers and diabetes to drugs to prevent HIV infection.
U.S. Judge Reed O’Connor of the North Texas District Court on Thursday rejected an Obamacare mandate requiring most private insurance policy to cover certain kinds of health care, an independent panel of experts called the Preventive Services Task Force advisable.
“Preventive care is a vital a part of healthcare: it saves lives, saves families money and improves our nation’s health,” Kamara Jones, a health and social services spokeswoman, said Thursday night after the judge’s ruling. “Actions that take away this 10-year protection are retroactive and incorrect.”
The case will now go to the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Most of the judges of this court were appointed by Republican presidents.
HHS estimates that 150 million Americans have benefited from free screening, counseling, medication, and other types of disease-preventing health care under Obamacare requirements.
The judge’s ruling has created confusion over which preventive services are still covered and which should not due to the way the court order was written. But Lawrence Gostin, an authority in health law at Georgetown University, said the ruling clearly jeopardizes free insurance for the overwhelming majority of preventive services listed below.
Gostin said most private insurance policy will likely proceed to cover these services, but will charge co-payments and deductibles. Working-class Americans will probably be hit the hardest and should forgo basic health care because they can not afford the cost, Gostin said.
O’Connor ruled that Obamacare couldn’t mandate free health care advisable by the Preventive Services Task Force because the organization’s members were illegally appointed. O’Connor tried to overturn Obamacare in its entirety in 2018, but the Supreme Court overturned it.
Two business owners and a number of other individuals sued the United States in March 2020 over the mandate of preventive health services, arguing that taking out insurance that included drugs to prevent HIV infection violated their Christian religious beliefs.
Plaintiffs claimed of their lawsuit that the HIV drug mandate “forces religious employers to provide coverage for drugs that facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior, prostitution, sexual promiscuity and injecting drug use.”
In addition they argued that the Preventive Services Task Force was established unconstitutionally and due to this fact its recommendations couldn’t function the basis for the Obamacare mandate.