Supreme Court Will Examine PPACA in March
Expect 2012 to be a big year. Beginning March 26, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Health Care Reform Law.
A decision will be based on 5 ½ hours of arguments, but it is not expected by analysts and lawyers until late June. The argument hearing is organized as follows:
- The hearing will open March 26 with a one-hour debate on whether a federal law called the Anti-Junction Act challenges the mandate premature until 2015, when the tax has been imposed on those who don’t want to buy individual insurance.
- The following day, the judges will hear two hours of argument on the central issue of constitutionality in regards to mandating that citizens buy health insurance or pay a penalty.
- On the final day, the court will hear arguments for 90 minutes on whether the provision may be severed from the balance of the statue, followed by an argument as to whether Congress can constitutionally require the states to expand Medicaid.
According to the Obama administration, the individual mandate is a core part of PPACA and will forbid insurers from turning away participants and disallow them from taking pre-existing conditions into account. Without the individual mandate, lawyers for the administration have argued that those specific provisions fall with it.
Though the central argument is whether the mandate to buy insurance is unconstitutional, the insurance-mandate penalties included in PPACA are a type of tax that can only be challenged after it is collected. Therefore, the court may determine that it is premature to determine constitutionality of the act until people are required to pay the tax starting January 2014.
With plans set to examine PPACA early next year, the most we can hope for is that our judicial system works hard to determine an outcome as quickly and efficiently as possible.
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