Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
The Supreme Court, though increasingly conservative in makeup, rejected the latest major Republican-led effort to kill the national health care law known as "Obamacare" on Thursday, preserving insurance coverage for millions of Americans.
The justices, by a 7-2 vote, left the entire Affordable Care Act intact in ruling that Texas, other GOP-led states and two individuals had no right to bring their lawsuit in federal court. The Biden administration says 31 million people have health insurance because of the law, which also survived two earlier challenges in the Supreme Court.
The law's major provisions include protections for people with existing health conditions, a range of no-cost preventive services, expansion of the Medicaid program that insures lower-income people and access to health insurance markets offering subsidized plans.
"The Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land," U.S. President Joe Biden, said, celebrating the ruling. He called for building further on the law that was enacted in 2010 when he was vice president.
Also left in place is the law's now-toothless requirement that people have health insurance or pay a penalty. Congress rendered that provision irrelevant in 2017 when it reduced the penalty to zero.
The elimination of the penalty had become the hook that Texas and other GOP-led states, as well as the Trump administration, used to attack the entire law. They argued that without the mandate, a pillar of the law when it was passed, the rest of the law should fall, too.
And with a Supreme Court that includes three appointees of former President Donald Trump, opponents of "Obamacare" hoped a majority of the justices would finally kill the law they have been fighting for more than a decade.
But the third major attack on the law at the Supreme Court ended the way the first two did, with a majority of the court rebuffing efforts to gut the law or get rid of it altogether.
Trump's appointees -- Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh -- split their votes. Kavanaugh and Barrett joined the majority. Gorsuch was in dissent, signing on to an opinion from Justice Samuel Alito.
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court that the states and people who filed a federal lawsuit "have failed to show that they have standing to attack as unconstitutional the Act's minimum essential coverage provision."
In dissent, Alito wrote, "Today's decision is the third installment in our epic Affordable Care Act trilogy, and it follows the same pattern as installments one and two. In all three episodes, with the Affordable Care Act facing a serious threat, the Court has pulled off an improbable rescue." Alito was a dissenter in the two earlier cases in 2012 and 2015, as well.
Like Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas was in dissent in the two earlier cases, but he joined Thursday's majority, writing, "Although this Court has erred twice before in cases involving the Affordable Care Act, it does not err today."
Because it dismissed the case for the plaintiff's lack of legal standing -- the ability to sue -- the court didn't actually rule on whether the individual mandate is unconstitutional now that there is no penalty for forgoing insurance. Lower courts had struck down the mandate, in rulings that were wiped away by the Supreme Court decision.
With the latest ruling, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that "the Affordable Care Act is here to stay," former President Barack Obama said, adding his support to Biden's call to expand the law.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton pledged to continue the fight against "Obamacare," which he called a "massive government takeover of health care."
But it's not clear what Republicans can do, said Larry Levitt, an executive vice president for the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health care.
"Democrats are in charge and they have made reinvigorating and building on the ACA a key priority," Levitt said. "Republicans don't seem to have much enthusiasm for continuing to try to overturn the law."
Republicans have pressed their argument to invalidate the whole law even though congressional efforts to rip out the entire law "root and branch," in Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell's words, have failed. The closest they came was in July 2017 when Arizona Sen. John McCain, who died the following year, delivered a dramatic thumbs-down vote to a repeal effort by fellow Republicans.
Chief Justice John Roberts said during arguments in November that it seemed the law's foes were asking the court to do work best left to the political branches of government.
The court's decision preserves benefits that have become part of the fabric of the nation's health care system.
Polls show that the law has grown in popularity as it has endured the heaviest assault. In December 2016, just before Obama left office and Trump swept in calling the ACA a "disaster," 46% of Americans had an unfavorable view of the law, while 43% approved, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll. Those ratings flipped, and by February of this year 54% had a favorable view, while disapproval had fallen to 39% in the same ongoing poll.
The health law is now undergoing an expansion under Biden, who sees it as the foundation for moving the U.S. to coverage for all. His giant COVID-19 relief bill significantly increased subsidies for private health plans offered through the ACA's insurance markets, while also dangling higher federal payments before the dozen states that have declined the law's Medicaid expansion. About 1.2 million people have signed up with HealthCare.gov since Biden reopened enrollment amid high levels of COVID cases earlier this year.
Most of the people with insurance because of the law have it through Medicaid expansion or the health insurance markets that offer subsidized private plans. But its most popular benefit is protection for people with preexisting medical conditions. They cannot be turned down for coverage on account of health problems, or charged a higher premium. While those covered under employer plans already had such protections, "Obamacare" guaranteed them for people buying individual policies.
Another hugely popular benefit allows young adults to remain on their parents' health insurance until they turn 26. Before the law, going without medical coverage was akin to a rite of passage for people in their 20s getting a start in the world.
Because of the ACA, most privately insured women receive birth control free of charge. It's considered a preventive benefit covered at no additional cost to the patient. So are routine screenings for cancer and other conditions.
For Medicare recipients, "Obamacare" also improved preventive care, and more importantly, closed a prescription drug coverage gap of several thousand dollars that was known as the "doughnut hole."
------
Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Canadian immigrants threatened by hostile regimes are urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the 'Countering Foreign Interference Act' so they can feel safe living in their adopted home.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
A long-simmering feud between hip-hop superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar reached a boiling point in recent days as the pair traded increasingly personal insults on a succession of diss tracks. Here’s a quick overview of what’s behind the ongoing beef.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that it has reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, a key terminal for the entry of humanitarian aid that was closed over the weekend after a Hamas rocket attack killed four Israeli soldiers nearby.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.