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The COVID-19 pandemic caused a huge spike in layoffs, leaving tens of millions of Americans without the employer-sponsored health insurance that had protected their families. But the 2010 Affordable Care Act offered a safety net for them — laid-off workers can sign up for replacement coverage for themselves and their families through their state insurance exchanges. And according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s estimates, nearly 80% of those who’d lost their coverage at work in the pandemic’s first two months were eligible for federal subsidies that lowered the cost of those new policies. Yet on Thursday, the Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to throw out the ACA because two self-employed Texans assert that the law injures them. (Jon Healey, 6/26)

The department's legal brief in California v. Texas restated the administration's position that the law's coverage provisions cannot stand without the defunct individual mandate. So, it was not surprising the Justice Department made this argument. But it was deeply disappointing the department made it as the nation reels from converging forces that make healthcare coverage more important than ever. The timing of the department's legal brief is especially unsettling for the nation's safety net and for the essential hospitals at its center. These hospitals regularly and disproportionately care for racial and ethnic minorities, and they have stood on the front lines of COVID-19 as the pandemic falls hardest on those same populations. (Bruce Siegel, 6/28)

The Trump Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to kill Obamacare. This has long been a foolish, foolhardy obsession for President Trump. Even in the middle of a widening pandemic, he seeks to eliminate health-care coverage for some 23 million Americans. In so doing, the president betrays his responsibility to defend in court a statute that Congress passed, resorting to bizarre legal arguments that liberal and conservative legal experts have denounced. (6/28)

As millions of Americans struggle with both a public health and an economic crisis, the Trump administration late Thursday formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety — a move that would cost more than 20 million Americans their health care coverage. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s description of the move as “unfathomable cruelty” is an understatement. Combined with the administration’s crashing failure to address the pandemic, this action at this time qualifies as political psychosis.President Barack Obama’s signature program, the ACA (Obamacare) has provided health care coverage to millions of Americans who either couldn’t afford it or were rendered uninsurable by preexisting medical conditions. (6/27)

Government public health officials in normal times are entrusted with thankless duties — tracking down the source of food poisoning, monitoring the spread of influenza, keeping tabs on water quality. Now, the coronavirus pandemic, and President Trump’s perverse response to it, have thrown these public servants into a vortex of fury, exposing them to threats from an angry population and pressure from political leaders. They deserve better. Opponents of a mask order recently came to the house of Chris Farnitano, a public health officer in Contra Costa County, across the bay from San Francisco. On the sidewalk, they drew an arrow pointing to his residence, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Tyranny is not the answer,” someone wrote in chalk. In Orange County, in Southern California, late last month, an angry group spoke out at a county supervisors meeting against an order requiring face coverings. “One person suggested that the order might make it necessary to invoke Second Amendment rights to bear arms, while another read aloud the home address of the order’s author — the county’s chief health officer, Dr. Nichole Quick,” according to a report by Kaiser Health News. (6/27)

In the 1960s, Sherry Arnstein helped transform health care in the United States by leading the development of a federal strategy to desegregate all of the country’s hospitals. She aimed to do the same for housing by designing guidelines to involve community residents in their local planning and policy-making activities. Arnstein may be best known for her ladder of citizen participation, which outlines the types of contributions that citizens can make in shaping matters that directly affect them. At the very top of the ladder are the types of engagement that meaningfully share power with citizens — ones that are unfortunately rarely seen in practice. (Jason Bobe and George Church, 6/29)

The road to a successful reopening of the U.S. economy is strewn with hopeful intentions — and formidable obstacles. The biggest and most important obstacle is a surge in new coronavirus cases, which presumably will lead to more hospitalizations and more deaths as well as more firms shutting down. The closings will reflect lost customers who are either sick or have been frightened into staying at home. This is the mega-worry hanging over the economy. But to this fear must be added at least three others that may frustrate economic recovery. The first is the crucial role of small firms in creating jobs. A new report from the forecasting firm IHS Markit illustrates the problem. In 2019, the U.S. economy had 10 million establishments with fewer than 50 employees, accounting for 44 percent of private-sector employment, according to the IHS study. (Robert J. Samuelson, 6/28)

Riah Milton and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, both black trans women, were murdered earlier this month. Their deaths appear to be part of an epidemic of hate crimes against transgender people, particularly trans women of color. Yet that same week, against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter protests, a global pandemic and Pride month, the Trump administration issued a rule to further imperil transgender people by stripping them of their right to seek health care without discrimination. The rule, finalized on June 12 by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights, rewrites part of the Affordable Care Act by interpreting “sex” discrimination to apply only to biological sex, thus allowing health care providers and insurance companies to refuse care or coverage to patients merely because they are transgender. (6/26)

Here’s a shakedown for the history books. On Wednesday Bayer agreed to pay up to $10.9 billion to settle with plaintiffs attorneys who claim its weedkiller Roundup caused cancer. Even this massive payout doesn’t guarantee an end to the company’s trial-lawyer tribulations. Bayer agreed to pay as much as $9.6 billion to settle some 125,000 cases and unfiled claims. In exchange, 25 law firms say they don’t intend to take on more litigation. Bayer will set aside another $1.25 billion for a future class-action settlement brought by a different set of trial lawyers. (6/26)

The coronavirus pandemic gave us the slogan “We’re all in this together.” It sounds warm and fuzzy, but it should have come with a disclaimer: “We” does not necessarily include “you.” Following in President Donald Trump’s footstep to blame immigrants, Gov. Ron DeSantis has found a new scapegoat for Florida’s rising COVID-19 infection numbers: essential immigrant workers. Look for this good old anti-immigrant narrative to get more play as other politicians join in, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducts research on the spread of the disease in immigrant communities. (Norma Henning, 6/25)