In a landmark ruling with wide-ranging implications, the Supreme Court today upheld the so-called individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, the key part of President Obama's signature health care law.
The court ruled that the mandate is unconstitutional under the Constitution's commerce clause, but it can stay as part of Congress's power under a taxing clause. The court said that the government will be allowed to tax people for not having health insurance.
"The Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax. Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling.
The high court kept the country in suspense for days, announcing at the beginning of the week that it would hand down its decision today. The ruling is a victory for the Obama administration and a defeat for Republicans, who had anticipated that at least some of the law would be struck down.
The court's ruling upholding the main part of Obama's law means that people must buy health insurance or pay a tax up to several thousand dollars a year. It also means that other popular provisions of the law will stay, including:
-- If you are under 26, you can get health insurance from the plan your parents use. -- If you're on Medicare, you can get free mammograms. -- If you have what's called a pre-existing condition, you can get health insurance. -- Insurance companies can't deny you coverage even if you get sick or make a mistake on your health insurance application.
David Goldman/AP Photo
The vote from the high court was five to four. Roberts, who was appointed by George W. Bush, joined the more liberal four justices in upholding the mandate. Justice Anthony Kennedy was thought to be the swing vote, but he sided with the conservative bloc.
"Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in section 5000 A under the taxing power and that section 5000 a need not be read to do more than impose a tax," Roberts wrote.
Read the court's full decision.
Reading the dissent from the bench, Kennedy said the Affordable Care Act is invalid in its entirety."
"It is true that if an individual does not purchase insurance, he or she affects the insurance market to a degree," he said. "But the Government's theory would make one's mere existence the basis for federal regulation. There would be no structural limit on the power of Congress. As a result, the Government's theory would change the relation between the citizens and the Federal Government in a fundamental way."
The ruling has immediate effects on the presidential race. Obama has called his health care law "the right thing to do," even as polling has determined that the law is unpopular. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, had vowed to repeal "ObamaCare" as soon as he became president, despite championing remarkably similar legislation as the governor of Massachusetts.
Even Karl Rove, the GOP uber-strategist who founded an outside spending group to defeat Obama in 2012, said the ruling helps Obama.
"If this is actually the decision, it's a boost for the president, but it doesn't make the controversy go away," Rove said on Fox News. "In fact, it probably enhances the controversy."
The official line from the GOP is that the ruling means the only way to get rid of the law is to elect Romney.
"On Election Day, we must elect Mitt Romney and put America on the path toward a brighter economic future and successful health care reform," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.
Obama was expected to make a statement within the hour.
While just 36 percent of people in the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll had a favorable opinion of the health law, a similarly low number of people — 39 percent — had a favorable opinion of the health care system as it stands now. And while the GOP has trumpeted polling that shows Americans unsatisfied with the law as a whole, the White House has boasted of surveys that show that people are warmer to individual parts of the law, like letting young adults stay on their parents' plans until they're 26 and barring insurers from denying coverage to people with so-called pre-existing conditions.
Source: http://feeds.abcnews.com/click.phdo?i=c0a4c5defed8bf35b42c4d3f1e3eebbc
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