S. 4653, “A bill to protect the healthcare of hundreds of millions of people of the United States and prevent efforts of the Department of Justice to advocate courts to strike down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” was introduced September 22, 2020 by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as a response to the Supreme Court agreeing to hear California v. Texas, a lawsuit involving multiple states with the aim of ruling the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare) unconstitutional.
The Senate did not vote directly on S. 4653, but on a motion to invoke cloture (and thus limit debate) so the bill could be voted on. The motion to invoke cloture was rejected on October 1, 2020 by a vote of 51 to 43 (Roll Call 200; a three-fifths majority of the entire Senate is required to invoke cloture). We have assigned pluses to the nays because the Affordable Care Act is an unconstitutional monstrosity of government intervention into the healthcare sector and is anything but affordable. ObamaCare reduced individual choice in the health-insurance market, increased costs for many Americans, and has been a poorly run boondoggle from the beginning, exactly what is to be expected when the federal government attempts to regulate and subsidize healthcare, something it has no constitutional authority to do.
