The legal battle over President Obama’s healthcare law ramped up again Tuesday, as two federal appeals courts handed down conflicting rulings on whether the government can continue to pay subsidies nationwide to millions of low- and middle-income people to help them with the cost of insurance.
The split decisions on a central element of the law increase the chances that the Supreme Court will take up another challenge to the Affordable Care Act as early as the coming year.
“With this circuit court split, we have yet another major challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that is almost surely going to make its way to the United States Supreme Court, “ said Rose Law Group Health Care and Employment Law Attorney David Weissman. He continued his perspective of the issue.
This challenge, though, is particularly significant because if successful, it has the potential to gut the entire law (unlike some of the more recent challenges, such as religious opposition to the contraceptive mandate). This is because, without subsidies in those states that have defaulted to a federal exchange, millions of Americans who are newly covered would again be unable to afford health insurance. “Also, without the subsidies there would effectively be no requirement that employers in the states on the federal exchange provide health insurance to their employees, due to the way the law’s penalties are structured. This could also have a major impact on the ACA’s implementation and effectiveness, and could essentially move us back to square one as far as our country’s uninsured problem.
“That said, I find it difficult to believe that the Supreme Court will be persuaded that it was Congress’ intent from the beginning not to provide subsidies in those states without state-based exchanges (there are 36, to be exact). It is more likely that the court will find that the ACA’s language on this issue is ambiguous, in which case the IRS guidelines stating that subsidies are indeed available in all states will prevail.”
