Affordable Care Act wins third challenge

The well-worn adage “the third time’s the charm,” lived up to its popular stature in a celestial law victory on June 17, when the Affordable Care Act was proudly stamped by the United States Supreme Court.

The 7-2 vote hammered the law into a long lifestyle. Earlier, the justices voted 5-4 for a majority, but the 7-2 split is being hailed as a stellar win for President Barack Obama’s defining domestic legacy.

The Antelope Valley Press commends the Court for its vote, which will provide structure to the ACA.

A defeat could have expanded the ranks of the uninsured in the United States by about 21 million people — a nearly 70 percent increase — according to recent estimates from the Urban Institute.

The biggest loss of coverage would have been among low-income adults who became eligible for Medicaid under the law after most states expanded the program to include them.

But millions of Americans would also have lost private insurance, including young adults whom the law allowed to stay on their parents’ plans until they turned 26 and families whose income was modest enough to qualify for subsidies that help pay for subsidies that help pay their monthly premiums.

A ruling against the law would also have doomed its protections for Americans with past or current health problems — or pre-existing conditions. The protections ban insurers from denying them coverage or charging them more for it.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who had cast the decisive vote to save the law in 2012, was in the majority, as was Justice Clarence Thomas, who had dissented in the earlier decisions.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett also joined Justice Breyer’s majority opinion. At Justice Barrett’s confirmation hearings last year, Democrats portrayed her as a grave threat to the health care law.

On Thursday, in what Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. called, in dissent, “the third installment in our epic Affordable Care Act trilogy” the Supreme Court again sustained the law. Its future now seems secure.

The margin of victory was wider than in the earlier cases, with six members on the court joining Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s modest and technical opinion, one that said only that the plaintiffs had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.