California's Attorney General says President Trump has affected America's healthcare system. Xavier Becerra says Trump's viewpoints on healthcare have been inconsistent and unpredictable.
"That unpredictability by itself, that instability in the health care marketplace is what raises costs," Becerra said.
Becerra has filed two legal actions on behalf of 15 other attorneys general to take up the case against a lawsuit filed by House Republicans. That lawsuit challenges federal subsidies at the center of the Affordable Care Act. The lawsuit, House v. Price, seeks to eliminate funding established by the Affordable Care Act, that provides working families help in paying for high healthcare costs.
Some healthcare experts say it's possible that even the threat of ending the funding could undercut the law, and destabilize the healthcare market. Premiums could increase by as much as 21%.
"No parent should worry if they can afford to take their child to a doctor or hospital,” Attorney General Becerra said in a statement.
“President Trump’s unpredictable behavior and lack of defense of the healthcare coverage of millions of Americans under the ACA threatens to resurrect those fears of every parent. Here in California, more than 5 million people now receive quality, affordable health care under the ACA, many for the first time. No one wants to return to the days when a child was denied care because of a preexisting condition, when a woman was charged more than a man for the same health care plan, when you needed care the most and found you had reached your lifetime limit.
California has seen the numbers of uninsured fall dramatically since the passage of the ACA. In 2013, nearly 17% of the state's population went without healthcare insurance. Only three years later, only 7.1% of Californians now go without health insurances.