Health Care Reform

Don’t Expect Brett Kavanaugh To Protect The Affordable Care Act

Thanks to Brett Kavanaugh’s 12 years as a judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals, we have a well-developed record of the Supreme Court nominee’s positions on key issues, including his views on American health care policy.

Brett Kavanaugh speaking at a podium

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Thanks to Brett Kavanaugh’s 12 years as a judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals, we have a well-developed record of the Supreme Court nominee’s positions on key issues, including his views on American health care policy.

In two high profile cases in 2011 and 2015, Kavanaugh upheld key parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But these cases, taken out of context, are misleading. They should not distract anyone evaluating his long record, nor overly inform how he might decide in future cases when it comes to health care.

Besides his record on reproductive health — which is controversial and is already creating significant opposition to his confirmation — Kavanaugh has exhibited strongly-held ideas about the relationship of the courts to government agencies and bureaucracies that carry out most of American public policy, also known as “the administrative state.”

Read more at WBUR’s Cognoscenti

About the author

  • Carmel Shachar

    Carmel Shachar is Health Law and Policy Clinic Faculty Director and Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Previously, Shachar was the Executive Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

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