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    What Happens to Obamacare Now?

    After a federal judge in Texas declared the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, the health law faces yet another trip through the courts, and more possibilities for destabilizing coverage.
    by Vann R. Newkirk II Dec 17, 2018 5 minutes
    Source: Alan Diaz / Associated Press

    Federal open-enrollment season rarely, if ever, seems to go smoothly. In 2017, President Donald Trump’s administration cut the budget for Affordable Care Act advertisement by 90 percent, and slashed the window to sign up for new health-insurance plans by 15 days. In a scramble to counter those rollbacks, former President Barack Obama himself had to cut an ad promoting his signature policy achievement.

    The year before that, misinformation and anxiety proliferated in advance of then-President-elect Trump’s promises to repeal Obamacare. And even before that, the annual sign-up season wasn’t too far removed from catastrophic glitches and poor recruitment among young adults. All those disturbances are reminders that while the bulk of the massive Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, it is still a rather delicate experiment.

    This year’s open enrollment was no different. The window, which ended at midnight Pacific time on the. But the biggest disturbance came right at the end, when on December 14 a federal judge ruled that the entire law was unconstitutional. Anybody still considering signing up for insurance during open enrollment was faced with a number of uncertainties. What does the ruling mean, and will Obamacare even still be around to cover people in the future?

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