For Many, Affordable Healthcare Hinges on Supreme Court Vote
The high court will vote this year on a requirement in Obama’s healthcare reform law that people buy insurance, which insurers see as a quid pro quo for accepting those with preexisting conditions.
It remains anyone’s guess how the Supreme Court will vote this year on whether Congress can require people to buy insurance as part of President Obama’s healthcare reform law.
At this point, the smart money is on a 4-4 split between the court’s conservative and progressive factions, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy the likely swing vote. And he hasn’t tipped his hand on how he feels about the issue.
With this in mind, it’s helpful to remember why this is even being discussed. It’s not because of arcane matters of law that require judicial review.
It’s because of people like Sharon Scott, a 47-year-old single mom in Anaheim who pays nearly half her $24,000 annual income to her insurer, Health Net, and is unable to shop around for a cheaper policy because she has cataracts.
“Many people think that if you have a preexisting condition, insurers will just charge you more,” she told me. “The reality is that they won’t even sell you a policy. You get shut out of the insurance system.”
That’s what is really on the line as healthcare reform makes its way to the high court. The law includes a provision halting insurers’ practice of denying coverage to anyone deemed to represent a greater financial risk because of a past or present medical condition.
But to prevent people from simply waiting until they get sick before buying insurance, the law also requires nearly everyone to join the risk pool by purchasing at least a minimum amount of coverage.
The thinking is that because everyone will need healthcare at some point in their lives, it’s not as though people are being forced to buy something they won’t use. Drivers in California and elsewhere, for example, are required to buy insurance before they can get behind the wheel of a vehicle. It’s just common sense.
But Republican attorneys general at the state level have objected to the so-called mandate, arguing that Congress lacks the authority to impose such a requirement on a nationwide basis. That’s a key question the Supreme Court must tackle.
If the court rejects the mandate, profit-minded insurers could try to back off from creating so-called health insurance exchanges in 2014. The exchanges are intended to provide an online marketplace for people without employer-provided insurance to purchase coverage.