U.S. President Donald Trump has been promising to repeal Obamacare ever since before he was even elected president. In 2017, a newly proposed set of healthcare rules was released but wasn’t officially finalized. Now, with the new laws set to take effect on January 14 next year, many states are speaking up to block the new rules, or at least parts of it, according to a new report.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, asked a federal judge on Thursday to block the Trump administration’s rules regarding contraceptives. As reported by the Hill , the final rules proposed by Trump’s administration will allow most businesses to opt out of covering contraceptives for their employees if they have moral or religious grounds to object to funding these protective measures.
Becerra made a statement on Thursday, explaining his objections to the rule changes, and adding that the state of California does not agree with that particular stipulation in the bill.
“The Trump Administration is continuing to trample on women’s rights and access to care with this illegal final rule. California will continue the fight against any actions that attempt to restrict women’s access to affordable, quality healthcare.”
And it seems that plenty of other states have jumped on board with Becerra’s request since it was made.
Attorneys general in Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington state and the District of Columbia have all joined in with Becerra’s call for an injunction on Thursday.
While many parts of the draft rules were pushed through in 2017 and immediately came into effect, they were blocked by several courts as the Trump administration tried to rush the process. Federal judges in California and Pennsylvania blocked the rules in part because the administration had not at any point allowed the public to comment on them before they were pushed through.
Eventually, after agreeing to allow public comment, the administration finalized the rules in November this year, with a proposed January 14 release date. There were a few changes that were made to the final rules from the original 2017 draft.
Just last week Friday, in a massive blow for millions of Americans who have been relying on it, a federal judge in Texas, Judge Reed O’Connor, ruled that Obamacare is unconstitutional, and “must be scrapped because Congress eliminated the penalty for people who fail to obtain insurance coverage,” according to a previous report by the Inquisitr .
