What to know as ACA lawsuit oral arguments begin - Entrepreneur Generations

"The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear oral arguments in a case that, for the third time in eight years, could result in the justices striking down the Affordable Care Act," Julie Rovner reports for Kaiser Health News. "The case, California v. Texas, is the result of a change to the health law made by Congress in 2017. As part of a major tax bill, Congress reduced to zero the penalty for not having health insurance. But it was that penalty — a tax — that the high court ruled made the law constitutional in a 2012 decision, argues a group of Republican state attorneys general. Without the tax, they say in their suit, the rest of the law must fall, too."

The court could rule in a number of ways: they could declare the whole law unconstitutional, they could refuse to decide the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs don't have the legal standing to sue; they could rule that, by eliminating the penalty but not the rest of the mandate, lawmakers didn't intend coercion, so there's no constitutional conflict; or they could rule that, without the tax, the requirement to have health insurance is unconstitutional but the rest of the law is legally sound, Rovner reports.

The ACA is unpopular among many rural conservatives who insist that the open-market premiums are too expensive. "But throughout the attempts to eliminate the ACA, politicians who oppose the law have promised that people with preexisting conditions will still be able to access health insurance if the law is overturned," Lauren Peace reports for Mountain State Spotlight. "But that’s easier said than done."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2GSV2oo What to know as ACA lawsuit oral arguments begin - Entrepreneur Generations

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