Here are six proposals for Congress as it begins the work of ending the disaster that is the Affordable Care Act and crafting a law that will benefit Americans and increase economic growth.
Thursday’s Supreme Court decision (King v. Burwell) allows Obamacare premium tax credits (subsidies) in states that do not run their own health insurance exchanges. The decision pretty much guarantees that all the Obamacare tax increases will be with us through at least 2016 — and probably forever.
Congressional Republicans were in a state of shock Thursday after the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare’s insurance subsidies nationwide, but they quickly laid out next steps in their quest to repeal the health care law.
“Everybody’s stunned,” said Rep. Dave Brat, a Virginia Republican. “I think the logic and the plain language was going to be the other direction. … This is a stunner.”
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that health insurance consumers can receive federal subsidies regardless of their state’s role in running their insurance market, fewer states may stay in the game.
Despite having survived a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal government’s health insurance markets face weighty struggles as they try to keep prices under control, entice more consumers and encourage quality medical care.
The government’s insurance markets – as well as more than a dozen run by states — have been operating for less than two years and are about to lose their training wheels. Start-up funds that have helped stabilize prices and partially pay for administration of the marketplaces are ending, feeding fears that premiums may rise after next year at a steeper rate.
Antonin Scalia is ready to rename the Affordable Care Act.
In a blistering dissent to the US supreme court’s landmark decision on Thursday to uphold key subsidies under Barack Obama’s healthcare reform legislation, the conservative justice expressed his contempt for his colleagues’ legal reasoning.
Obamacare has cleared a second major hurdle at the Supreme Court — but its troubles are far from over.
The law is still highly unpopular, and significant structural issues remain: Health insurance rates are rising, many people don’t have as much choice of doctors and hospitals as they’d like, some states continue to struggle with their exchanges, and 21 states still haven’t backed Medicaid expansion.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court sided with the Obama administration in the King v. Burwell Obamacare case. In a statement after the decision, President Obama declared that his signature health law is “here to stay.” But in his remarks, the President knowingly ignored the key concept in the case: that if the challengers had won, not one word of the law called the “Affordable Care Act” would have been changed. On the other hand, if voters elect a Republican President and a Republican Congress in 2016, quite a bit will change.