Former HHS secretary: Supreme Court case on Affordable Care Act could devastate the rural health-care system

A challenge at the Supreme Court to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could devastate rural America’s fragile health-care system, according to Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor who was secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services "during the landmark legislation’s passage and rollout." Tim Marema reports for The Daily Yonder.

On Tuesday at the Rural Assembly Everywhere virtual conference, Sebelius said the pending case has created "a very precarious situation where all of that could be struck down . . . All of those provisions could vanish, including Medicaid expansion." Sebelius noted that Kansas has lost three rural hospitals in the past two years, partly because the state did not expand Medicaid under the law, Marema reports.

"Since 2010, 133 rural hospitals have closed nationally, according to the University of North Carolina Sheps Center. Most have been in states that did not expand Medicaid," Marema notes.

In 2018, Texas and 19 other states sued to have the ACA declared unconstitutional on grounds that Congress's removal of the individual mandate to buy health insurance had removed the linchpin of its constitutionality in a previous Supreme Court decision. Oral arguments in the case are set for Nov. 10.