The Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — has survived another legal fight.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that those challenging the federal health coverage law in the latest case had no standing to bring their claims.
The high court's ruling isn't entirely satisfying to anyone involved because it didn't address the questions raised about the law's legality, only whether two individuals and more than a dozen states led by Texas had any right to take those issues to court. They don't, the court ruled on a 7-2 vote that included conservative and liberal justices.
This is the third time that Obamacare's opponents have brought increasingly creative and desperate challenges to the health care law before the high court and the third time they have been turned back. Although the justices involved have changed over the years and the court has clearly become more conservative, the common thread of the high court's public discussions seems to be that the Supreme Court shouldn't be used to make essentially political decisions about health care coverage law.
As Chief Justice John Roberts bluntly said during oral arguments on the Texas case, “that’s not our job.”
Indeed, there have been countless efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act in Congress, too. All ultimately failed, although lawmakers undercut the law in 2017 when they essentially neutered its individual health coverage mandate by reducing the tax penalty for the uninsured to zero.
Still, the essence of the law has remained in place since 2010, including protections against insurance discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions; ability of parents to cover their children through age 26; minimum standards of coverage; and broad federal financing of health care for millions through Medicaid expansion for the poorest working-aged Americans and subsidized insurance for many others.
Oklahoma voters approved acceptance of Medicaid expansion only last year, and the program is scheduled to go into effect July 1. Almost 118,000 working poor Oklahoma adults have signed up for Medicaid benefits, and as many as 82,000 more could join them.
Oklahoma is one of six red states where voters have embraced Medicaid expansion against the wishes of dominant politicians. Initiatives are pending in three others. A total of 39 states have accepted Medicaid expansion.
There may well be more legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act, but the Supreme Court doesn't seem to be moving any closer to accommodating those ideas. Meanwhile, it is clear that voting Americans are becoming increasingly comfortable with the protections and benefits of Obamacare.
The high court has repeatedly made it clear that this is an issue to be decided in the political sphere. When a majority of deep-red Oklahoma voters embrace one of the law's central options, that looks unlikely.
[Tulsa World]
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