It seems the United States Supreme Court is unlikely to consider the fate of the Affordable Care Act prior to the 2020 presidential election. The court denied a request Tuesday from ACA supporters to expedite consideration of the case.
President Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to repeal the ACA are credited to some extent with Democrats gaining a majority in the House in the 2018 midterms. This, of course, came eight years after Republicans had gained the House majority, riding a wave of support from those opposed to Barack Obama’s signature health care law. But even among those voters who opposed the ACA, certain elements of it—like the requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions—have become popular with Americans on both sides of the political spectrum.
And the law is guaranteed to be a talking point during the lead-up to the 2020 election. Current Democratic presidential candidates vary in their stances on the ACA. Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden would both like to expand the ACA and allow Americans to buy into a public insurance option that’s Medicare-style. But progressives like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would like to see it go away altogether, to be replaced by a government-sponsored, single-payer “Medicare for All” health care system.