US justice dept asks SC to scrap Obamacare as Trump readies for election

US President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday night argued in a legal brief filed to the Supreme Court that the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) or the ObamaCare should be invalidated, the media reported.

"The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate, though the scope of relief entered in this case should be limited to provisions shown to injure the plaintiffs," the Department of Justice wrote in the brief filed on Thursday night.

The legal filing, while expected, makes official the Trump administration's position in the Supreme Court against the health law months ahead of the November general elections, according to a report in The Hill new website.

Overturning the ACA would take away health coverage for about 20 million people, and the stakes are even higher given the effects of the current pandemic, it added.

The brief argues that because the law's requirement to have health insurance was upheld in court as a tax in 2012, and Congress has since repealed the financial penalty for violating that requirement, in 2017, it is no longer a tax and therefore no longer constitutional.

The administration has said that because this one provision is invalid, the rest of the law is so intertwined with this provision that the entire law should fall, too.

Reacting to the development, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: "President Trump and the Republicans' campaign to rip away the protections and benefits of the ACA in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty."

While Trump has supported the unsuccessful Congressional Republican repeal and replace plans in 2017, he has not presented an ObamaCare alternative of his own.