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A lawsuit against Obamacare may well turn out to be a bigger story in the news than in the courts. When the Donald Trump administration declined to defend the law, and partly endorsed the lawsuit, critics denounced it for flouting its alleged duty to defend duly enacted federal laws in court. They said the lawsuit threatens everyone with pre-existing conditions, who would lose the protections that Obamacare provides. But the lawsuit is highly unlikely to succeed. It makes two basic arguments, one of which is trivial and the other absurd. It is on far weaker ground than the two major anti-Obamacare lawsuits that preceded it. (Ramesh Ponnuru, 6/14)

Polls suggest that the public considers health care the most important issue in the midterm elections. This immediately raises the question: Do voters understand what’s at stake? In particular, do they realize that if Republicans hold Congress, they will strip away protections for the 52 million Americans — more than a quarter of nonelderly adults — who have pre-existing conditions that, before passage of the Affordable Care Act, could have led insurers to deny them coverage? (Paul Krugman, 6/14)

Ask Americans whether the federal government should require health insurers to provide coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, and a vast majority — 92% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans — say yes.  So what part of Obamacare is the Trump administration trying to kill? The mandate to cover pre-existing conditions, which has been a blessing for people who buy insurance on the individual market. This would harm those people, and politically it’s not very smart, either. It hands Democrats another issue to use in their battle to win back the House and the Senate in November's elections. (6/14)

In the Trump administration’s response to the lawsuit brought by Texas and the Texas Public Policy Foundation challenging the current constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Department of Justice agreed that several key portions of the ACA were unconstitutional. Immediately, several commentators reported that the Justice Department’s failure to defend the law in its entirety was a radical and dangerous departure from precedent. The Associated Press called the move a “rare departure from the Justice Department's practice of defending federal laws in court.” Former Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, called it “a sad moment” and “impossible to believe.” ...The truth is, the government’s decision not to defend a clearly unconstitutional law is neither unprecedented, nor even rare. Indeed, it is what the founders expected and precisely how we should want government lawyers to behave. (Chance Weldon, 6/14)

The Trump administration’s decision to argue that part of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional — the requirement that every American purchase health insurance, known as the individual mandate — raises real doubts about the law’s future. (Robert Henneke, 6/14)