18 Jun 2021 04:06AMWASHINGTON: The Supreme Court dismissed a major challenge to the Obama era health care law on Thursday, turning aside an effort by Republican-led states to throw out the law that provides insurance coverage for millions of Americans.
The elimination of the penalty had become the hook that Texas and other Republican-led states, as well as the Trump administration, used to attack the entire law. They argued that without the mandate, a pillar of the law when it was passed in 2010, the rest of the law should fall, too. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court that the states and people who filed a federal lawsuit “have failed to show that they have standing to attack as unconstitutional the Act’s minimum essential coverage provision.”
With the latest ruling, the ACA is “here to stay for the foreseeable future,” said Larry Levitt, an executive vice president for the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health care. Chief Justice John Roberts said during arguments in November that it seemed the law’s foes were asking the court to do work best left to the political branches of government.
The health law is now undergoing an expansion under President Joe Biden, who sees it as the foundation for moving the US to coverage for all. His giant COVID-19 relief bill significantly increased subsidies for private health plans offered through the ACA’s insurance markets, while also dangling higher federal payments before the dozen states that have declined the law’s Medicaid expansion. About 1 million people have signed up with HealthCare.