Washington, D.C.—The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued its decision to overturn the entire ACA in its opinion for the Texas v. U.S. appellate court case. This decision will affect nearly every American in some way. The number of individuals who will now be uninsured with this recent decision will surely increase. Health insurance companies will also now be able to discriminate against individuals on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability in certain health programs or activities.

The American Muslim Health Professionals (AMHP) expresses regret over the 5th Circuit’s decision to overturn the ACA and urges the state intervener-defendants to ask the Supreme Court to review the case. AMHP also requests that the Trump Administration continue enforcing the ACA while the Supreme Court deliberates the case. The 5th Circuit should also look to Congress’s intent to determine the appropriate remedy.

AMHP has a long history of promoting and protecting ACA efforts. When the ACA’s major provisions came into force in 2014, AMHP orchestrated volunteers to help American-Muslim commnity members register for affordable medical insurance plans covered under the ACA.

AMHP appreciates the significant changes the ACA has made to the individual insurance market, including requiring protections for people with pre-existing conditions, creating insurance marketplaces, and authorizing premium subsidies for people with low and modest incomes. 

The ACA also made other sweeping changes throughout the healthcare system, including expanding Medicaid eligibility for low-income adults; requiring private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid expansion coverage of preventive services with no cost sharing; phasing out the Medicare prescription drug “doughnut hole” coverage gap; reducing the growth of Medicare payments to health care providers and insurers; establishing new national initiatives to promote public health, care quality, and delivery system reforms; and authorizing a variety of tax increases to finance these changes. 

All of these provisions could now be overturned since the trial court’s decision is upheld, and it would be enormously complex to disentangle them from the overall health care system. Therefore, AMHP strongly discourages the overturn of the ACA and urges the Supreme Court to deliberate this case, in the hope that the ACA may be protected.

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If you would like more information about this topic, please email Lujain Al-Khawi, AMHP Health Policy & Advocacy Intern at advocacy@amhp.us.