Four
cities filed a lawsuit
against the Trump Administration, claiming the president is intentionally
undermining the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and violating a Constitutional duty
to faithfully execute existing law. “Having failed to persuade Congress to
repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Trump and his Administration are
waging a relentless campaign to sabotage and, ultimately, to nullify the law,”
read the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland by the cities of
Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati and Columbus, OH.
The
suit claims the administration’s undermining of the ACA violates the Take Care
Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act and should be declared unlawful and
stopped. The cities offer a number of complaints
about the administration’s tactics to limit the ACA’s effectiveness by making
it more difficult to obtain coverage through exchanges, including that it has
led to an upward trend of the uninsured rate, which had dipped to an all-time
low of 9.1% in 2015 .
Health
and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services Administrator Seema Verma, are also named as codefendants with the
president in the 130-page suit.