Trump ‘Very Disappointed’ With Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh on Obamacare Ruling

President Donald Trump speaks to media before departing on Marine One en route to Ohio and Texas, from the White House South Lawn in Washington, on Aug. 7, 2019. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump is not pleased with some of the votes that his Supreme Court nominees have made, including siding with Democrat nominees in a recent ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act.

The nation’s top court ruled last week that a collection of states asserting that the act, also known as Obamacare, is unconstitutional lacked standing.

Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, two of Trump’s nominees, joined with the bulk of the court in tossing the lawsuit.

“Disappointed and that’s the way it goes, very disappointed,” Trump said in an interview on Real America’s Voice.

“I fought very hard for them. But I was very disappointed with a number of their rulings.”

Asked if he second-guessed some of the choices, he added, “Second guessing does no good, but I was disappointed with a number of rulings that they made.”

Trump made three Supreme Court nominations, as many in one term as former President Barack Obama did in two terms. One of Obama’s was never confirmed.

Trump did praise the court for ruling that Christian charities can refuse to place children with same-sex couples.

“It was a great ruling,” he said.

On the Obamacare issue, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s other pick, dissented from the majority decision along with Justice Samuel Alito. They said that Obamacare is clearly unconstitutional.

Seated from left: Associate Justice Samuel Alito, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, standing from left: Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett pose during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court in Washington on April 23, 2021. Erin Schaff/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Some of the Republican-led states that had challenged the Affordable Care Act said justices avoided a key question by dismissing the suit for alleged lack of standing.

The Supreme Court on Monday followed its recent ruling by declining to hear a case brought by health insurance companies.

The private insurers asked for full reimbursement from the federal government under a part of Obamacare. The provision encouraged health insurers to provide coverage to those who were previously uninsured.

The companies said they were collectively owed millions of dollars for each year they did not receive payments the government had pledged to make under the 2010 law. Litigation will now continue in lower courts over how much the insurers can claim.

The Supreme Court left in place an August 2020 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the insurers’ reimbursement for money owed could be offset by other income they received from the government in the form of premium tax credits.

The Supreme Court in an 8–1 ruling in April 2020 in a related case decided that the federal government must “honor its obligations” and pay various private insurers up to $12 billion owed to them.

That ruling concerned payments to the insurers via the law’s so-called risk corridor program designed to mitigate insurers’ risks from 2014 to 2016, when they sold coverage to previously uninsured people through exchanges established under Obamacare.

The latest case was related to a separate Obamacare provision that requires the government to reimburse insurers for cost-sharing payments such as deductibles and co-payments. The Trump administration announced in 2017 that it would cease making the payments.

Reuters contributed to this report.