Top court hands Obama major health law win
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a major component of President Barack Obama’s landmark health-care overhaul in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans.
The 6-3 ruling said that 8.7 million Americans are entitled to continue receiving nationwide tax subsidies to make health insurance affordable regardless of local regulations in their states.
The outcome is a major victory for Obama in politically charged Supreme Court tests of his most significant domestic achievement.
The 2010 law, called the Affordable Care Act — often called ObamaCare by critics — prevents insurers from denying coverage because of “pre-existing” health conditions. It requires almost everyone in the U.S. to be insured and provides financial help to consumers who otherwise would spend too much on their health insurance.
Chief Justice John Roberts voted with liberal colleagues in support of the law. “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
Nationally, 10.2 million people have signed up for health insurance under the Obama health overhaul. That includes the 8.7 million people who are receiving an average subsidy of $272 a month to help cover their insurance costs.
Of those receiving subsidies, 6.4 million people were at risk of losing that aid because they live in states that did not set up their own health insurance exchanges.
The law’s opponents argued the vast majority of people who now get help paying for their insurance coverage are ineligible for their federal tax credits. That is because some three dozen states opted against creating their own health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges, and instead rely on a federal platform to help people find coverage if they don’t get insurance through their jobs or the government.
The Obama administration, congressional Democrats and 22 states responded that it would make no sense to construct the law — designed to decrease the number of uninsured — that way. The point of the subsidies is to keep enough people in the pool of insured to avoid triggering a so-called death spiral of declining enrolment, a growing proportion of less healthy people and payment increases by insurers.
Several portions of the law indicate consumers can claim tax credits no matter where they live.