Well, this is the last day of the
three-day Supreme Court health care deliberations, and it’s looking like they
intend to let the majority of the Affordable Care Act stand as is. It appears
as if it is the individual mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance by
2014 or face a penalty that is the issue most likely to get the ax.
Today, they are trying to determine
what the procedure is to declare only part of the act as unconstitutional.
There is some question about whether they can delete just part of the act and
let the rest stand or if they have to scrap the entire law. This is important to
determine since the court tends to be reluctant to scrap the whole thing just because
they feel the individual mandate portion of the act is questionable legally.
Also still under debate is whether it
is proper for this act to mandate that states increase how much the contribute
to Medicaid costs. As it stands now, if individual states do not comply with
the federal government’s requirement to share more of the Medicaid burden, they
can lose funding.
The problem is arising from the fact
that the act is so huge and there are so many different types of legislation
mixed together. Justice Scalia has stated that it would be unrealistic to
expect The Court to sift through 2700 pages of the law and decide on each issue
one by one. The justices believe that is the responsibility of the Congress
instead.
Everyone is keeping a close eye on
this debate, and their final decision is eagerly anticipated. It will be interesting,
and historically significant, to see what the final outcome proves to be.
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