Last December’s tax law eliminated the tax penalty associated with the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) individual shared responsibility penalty (or individual mandate).  Although the mandate still exists in the ACA, the financial penalty associated with not purchasing affordable insurance has been eliminated.

Last year the legislative effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act collapsed, and it seemed that the ACA’s most important protection – non-discriminatory access to health insurance for people with pre-existing health conditions – was saved.   Now Americans once again are facing an existential threat to this most basic guarantee.  The cause: a lawsuit filed in February, 2018, by 20 states to overturn the ACA in its entirety as an unconstitutional act