A group of West Virginia doctors is asking the state attorney general to withdraw support for a federal lawsuit that seeks to throw out the Affordable Care Act, which provides medical insurance for hundreds of thousands in the state.
Thirty West Virginia doctors signed a letter dated Sept. 14 to state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, noting that the Obama-era act has extended and protected health care coverage to at least 200,000 West Virginians.
Their letter contends that if the ACA is lost it would “do irreparable harm to the health care coverage of 200,000 West Virginians and to our state’s economy.”
Morrisey is one of a group of Republican state attorneys general who have signed their states onto a lawsuit that seeks to invalidate the Affordable Care Act. The lawsuit is based on a 2017 tax bill that eliminated penalties for not having medical insurance, which contradicts the ACA.
“The ACA contains an unconstitutional command that can no longer be saved as a tax,” according to the GOP brief. “The ACA itself insists that its other major health-insurance reforms rise and fall with this unconstitutional command. And those reforms were the core of the ACA.”
The doctors’ signed letter asks for specifics about how the state would respond to the challenges that would arise in a post-ACA West Virginia, including elimination of coverage for pre-existing medical conditions, rollback of prescription drug subsidies, a return to Black Lung benefit restrictions and the effect on the revenues of rural hospitals and clinics.
The lawsuit is on appeal and will go before the U.S. Supreme Court this November. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the ACA in 2012.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Marshall Health and Charleston Area Medical Center.
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