Trump's Supreme defeat: Will Republicans finally stop trying to cancel people's health care?

Former President Donald Trump’s health care legacy now includes trying and failing to take away health care coverage from millions during a pandemic. On Thursday, his relentless effort to get rid of the Affordable Care Act hit what will likely be its final dead end. The conservative Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the plaintiffs – Republican states with the backing of Trump’s Justice department – didn’t even have standing to bring the suit in the first place.

The 2010 law has become deeply entrenched throughout public life. Over 30 million Americans are covered through it and virtually everyone benefits from one or more of the protections we have come to take for granted over the last 11 years. For years a sword hung over them as Trump tried to eliminate all of that. The court has now removed the sword and the threat.

4-year fight to cause Americans harm

Millions of Americans who are not yet covered by the law and are eligible for coverage can now get it without fear. Since President Joe Biden put in place a special enrollment period in February, more than 1.2 million Americans have already have signed up. And thanks to new provisions in the American Rescue Plan, ACA coverage is much more affordable. Now 80% of the uninsured can get coverage for $10 per month or less.

Beyond this, it’s worth considering what the effort to repeal it since its inception says about our politics. Trump spent four years clogging up all three branches of government to try to eliminate the ACA. Neither the fate of American families nor massive losses in the midterm elections nor his duty to implement the law would deter him. Neither would a global pandemic. It all turned out to be an epic failure.

An interesting question is why. Why did Trump and Republicans fight so hard to do something so plainly unpopular and harmful to millions of Americans? Especially because, as the ruling yesterday showed, the plaintiffs in this case didn’t even have standing to bring the case – in other words, they were not being harmed by the law. So why try to eliminate a law that helps some in such a deeply personal way, particularly if it causes no harm (and is budget neutral)? The Republican politics of health care and the politics of Trump are the politics of cruel indifference.

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And about the pandemic. Trump’s legacy of willful neglect, his silencing of dissenting voices, and the improvisational approach are all plain to see (and documented in my new book "Preventable"). The decisions he makes read like a fictional depiction of an evil, bungling menace. When you add his constant effort to strip people of their health care as they are dying, it completes an untoward chapter in our history.

Republicans have a choice

Where does the health care debate go from here? A decade in, Obamacare is no longer about former President Barack Obama. It has reached into the lives and habits and the financial security of households throughout the country. Many of them have no idea whose namesake, signature law is what's protecting them.

At this point, the debate shifts in the direction of how we finish the job: Adding more security and more affordability; improving the equity and fairness to reach everyone; and to taking on the excesses in areas like prescription drug prices. Improvements in mental health and public health should be obvious priorities.

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Republicans have the perfect opportunity at this juncture to lay down their weapons, rhetorical and legislative, that aim to strip people of health security, and try to shape that agenda. But if they don’t, the message is clear. This is not the right fight for them to pick.

Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) was President Joe Biden's White House senior adviser for COVID response until this month and ran the Affordable Care Act and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2015 to 2017 for President Barack Obama. His new book is "Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump tried to kill health law during COVID. It's a cruel, futile fight.