Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Columbus claim the Trump administration's 'death-by-one-thousand-cuts campaign' is designed to weaken the ACA and 'deceptively shift blame' to the law itself.
Four cities filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the Trump administration, claiming the president is intentionally undermining the Affordable Care Act and violating a Constitutional duty to "faithfully execute" existing law.
"Having failed to persuade Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Trump and his Administration are waging a relentless campaign to sabotage and, ultimately, to nullify the law," read the complaint, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Maryland by the cities of Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Columbus, Ohio.
"To that end, President Trump and his Administration are deliberately trying to make the Act fail," the complaint continues.
"They are discouraging Americans from enrolling in comprehensive plans that protect them against debilitating medical expenses. They are working to raise prices and reduce choices for Americans seeking insurance in the Act's exchanges. And they are misappropriating funds Congress allocated to support the Act, instead using those funds to attack it."
Ultimately, the complaint read, the Trump administration hopes to "deceptively shift the blame from their own actions to the Act itself" and to pressure Congress to repeal the ACA or to achieve a de facto repeal through executive action.
"There's a clear case of premeditated destruction of the Affordable Care Act," Zach Klein, Columbus city attorney, told NBC News.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma are also named as codefendants with the president in the 130-page suit. The Executive Branch watchdog group Democracy Forward has joined the plaintiffs.
The suit claims the administration's undermining of the ACA violates the Take Care Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act, and should be declared unlawful and stopped.
The cities offer a litany of complaints about the Administration's tactics to limit the ACA's effectiveness by making it more difficult to obtain coverage through exchanges, specifically:
- Promoting insurance that does not comply with the ACA's requirements, including coverage of preexisting conditions;
- Slashing funding for outreach to encourage people to sign up for coverage;
- Misusing federal funds for advertising campaigns that instead are "smearing the ACA," and "spinning false narratives" about the success of the act;
- Shortening enrollment periods; and
- Imposing documentation requirements the plaintiffs deem unnecessary and onerous.
The complaint further alleges that the administration has shirked oversight of insurance rate increases and reduced rebates to consumers, in an effort to raise premiums, create uncertainty, and cause insurers to flee the markets.
The cities said their case is easy to prove because Trump and his administration "have been remarkably transparent about their intent and approach."
"'If we don't get it done' in Congress, President Trump has said, 'we are going to watch Obamacare go down the tubes, and we'll blame the Democrats . . . and at some point, they are going to come and say, 'You've got to help us,'" the complaint alleges, adding that Trump has repeatedly stated that Obamacare is "essentially dead."
The suit alleges that the Trump Administrations actions are "an affront to the rule of law."
"The Administration's actions raise questions that go to the heart of our structure of government: whether the executive branch must 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,' U.S. Const. art. II, ยง 3, and whether the Constitution therefore prohibits the President and his appointees from wielding executive power to destroy a duly-enacted law," the complaint states.
The cities' suit is the latest in a flurry of lawsuits surrounding the ACA. In June, the Trump administration took heat for its decision to quit defending key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
The outcry came as 17 Democratic state attorneys general challenged the Department of Justice's decision in a federal lawsuit brought in February by 20 Republican state attorneys general.
Cities Sue Trump Over ACA 'Sabotage' by HLMedit on Scribd
John Commins is the news editor for HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The suit alleges that the administration's intentional undermining of the ACA violates the Constitution's Take Care Clause.
The complaint claims that the administration hopes to 'deceptively shift the blame from their own actions to the Act itself.'
The plaintiff cities claim Trump has been 'remarkably transparent' about undermining the ACA.