Trump Says He Hopes Supreme Court Ends Obamacare

President Donald Trump speaks during a town hall at Perez Art Museum Miami in Miami, Fla., on Oct. 15, 2020. Evan Vucci/AP Photo

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would like to see the Supreme Court strike down the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, which he would replace with his own health care plan.

During an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Trump said he will be announcing his “fully developed” health care plan right after the Supreme Court decides on the fate of Obamacare. The Supreme Court is set to hear a case challenging Obamacare in mid-November.

“I hope that they end it. It will be so good if they end it because we will come up with a plan,” Trump told CBS News host Lesley Stahl.

“It is going to be announced very soon when we see what happens with Obamacare, which is not good,” he continued. “It will be much less expensive than Obamacare, which is a disaster, and it will take care of people with preexisting conditions.”

“We have large sections of it already done. And we’ve already come up with plans,” Trump said, without elaborating on the possible changes to the existing health care plan. “We have to see what happens. It’s got a ways to go. We’ll see what happens.”

Trump has repeatedly promised to implement a health care plan that he says would be superior to Obamacare. “Obamacare will be replaced with a MUCH better, and FAR cheaper, alternative if it is terminated in the Supreme Court,” he wrote last month on Twitter. “Would be a big WIN for the USA!”

Meanwhile, Democrats are worried that Judge Amy Coney Barrett would form a 6-3 anti-Obamacare majority if confirmed to the Supreme Court. According to the Congressional Budget Office, approximately 22 million Americans have gained health coverage under Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

“What I am concerned about is anyone that President Trump would have appointed was there to undo the Affordable Care Act,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper last month. “That is why he was in such a hurry, so he could have been in place for the oral arguments which begin Nov. 10.”

Although she has written critically about certain provisions of the ACA as a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, Barrett told senators at her confirmation hearings that she isn’t particularly “hostile” to Obamacare.

“I think that your concern is that because I critiqued the statutory reasoning that I’m hostile to the ACA, and that because I’m hostile to the ACA, I would decide a case a particular way,” Barrett said. “I’m not hostile to the ACA. I’m not hostile to any statute that you pass.”