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WASHINGTON: The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld President Barack Obama’s sweeping “Obamacare” health care legislation in a narrow 5-4 ruling.
Supporters of the Affordable Care Act react to the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court over the health care overhaul, outside the court in Washington, June 28, 2012. (Photo courtesy Truth Out)
The long-awaited Supreme Court vote on what is commonly known as “Obamacare” upheld the “individual mandate” provision, which requires individuals to buy health insurance or face a fine. The survival of the legislation, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, was in question throughout months of Court deliberations and heated oral arguments.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which said that the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution does not give Congress the authority to require people to have health care, but that other parts of the Constitution did.
The ruling on the mandate keeps the entire ACA together, thereby insuring millions of Americans, banning insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and allowing young people to stay on their parent’s insurance up until the age of 26.
The Court did, however, find problems with the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid – a program for people with low incomes and resources, jointly funded by State and Federal Governments – but said the expansion could proceed providing the federal government does not threaten to withhold a States’ entire Medicaid allotment if they don’t take part in the law’s extension.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
5 Comments
I’m relieved that the Supreme Court decided to uphold all provisions of the the Affordable Health Care Act. We have been able to provide health care insurance for our mostly unemployed 24-year old daughter under provision 8 in the list above. Catastrophic accident or illness would impose an enormous financial burden on her if she lacked coverage.
Thanks to President Obama and Congressional Democrats for getting the Act passed in the face of hostility from the Republicans and at times, the general public. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts (boy, was that a surprise) and the liberal justices for upholding the Act.
COMING SOON AT A MEDICARE NEAR YOU ? LISTEN UP AUSTRALIA!
Award winning Texas-based journalist and author JAMES MOORE is both a friend and contributor to INDEPENDENT AUSTRALIA.
He has a great affection for Australia and is a fearless commentator on current affairs.
He sent this statement to me today and it is timely to include it in the comments of this OBAMACARE article: –
Will Rick Perry Allow Up to 1.8 Million Texans to Receive Free Health Care?
Statement from James Moore, Director, Progress Texas PAC:
“After today’s SCOTUS ruling, Governor Perry now has the opportunity to provide health care to up to 1.8 million Texans without raising state taxes.”
“The expansion of Medicaid is 100 percent covered until 2016 for eligible Texans under the Affordable Care Act and 95-90 percent in the subsequent years. Can Rick Perry say no to free health care for Texans when 1 out of 4 people in our state lack coverage?”
“Texas taxpayers can either pay for their own health care here at home or pay for health care for people living in Vermont.”
From the Texas Health and Human Services Commission:
Texas will experience caseload growth in newly eligible individuals (estimated at 1.2 million in 2014) and individuals who are currently eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP (estimated at about 600,000 in 2014).
* From Tess: PAC stands for POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE.
It’s funny, living in a country where healthcare is largely assumed to be a right, you’d never think people (and poor people too) would be opposed to it.
Point 6 may be important, but I suspect that most Australians were confronted with Obamacare themselves, they wouldn’t like it.
It is fairly similar to some European systems like Germany, rather than Commonwealth systems.
In the German system it is compulsory to take out insurance with a private provider. The amount you pay depends on the franchise you choose, that is the sum of money you choose to cover yourself.
For a young healthy person you chose the highest franchise possible (in my case about 2000 dollars) as this had the cheapest premiums. That means I was saying I would met the first 2000 dollars of my heathcare costs per year before I could claim on insurance. The insurance itself was about 150 dollars – around 1800 dollars a year.
So in practice you pay 1800 dollars a year to a private company and still have to pay all the healthcare you are likely to encounter. Of course under a commonwealth style system you probably pay 1800 or more in taxes for health – but at least when you need to use the system it is affordable.
One British commentator has liken the potency of the issue to the poll tax in 90s Britain. Maybe its a good thing, but I can understand why many will resent it.
Dear PADDYBOY, you are so right.
The POTUS, BARACK OBAMA has rightly long fought for this – and actually, it was initially incorrectly reported that he had lost the vote.
In fact he won, by one vote, a bit like BLACK CAVIAR winning by a nostril!
Which reminds me, wasn’t the FAIR INDEXATION AND DEATH BENEFITS AMENDMENT BILL defeated by ONE vote ?
I think so.
And didn’t that ONE vote belong to SENATOR KATE LUNDY who had earlier pledged her word to Veterans?
We know so!
Let the record show.