Jew World Order

THURSDAY, June 28 (HealthDay News) — Surprising many legal
scholars, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld on Thursday the constitutionality
of most of the controversial health reform law that requires almost all
Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty in the form of a
tax.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the signature
legislative achievement of President Barack Obama‘s administration, has
been fiercely debated since its inception in March 2010. On one side of
the argument have been many Democrats, who view the law as the first
substantive legal attempt to greatly expand the number of insured
Americans while improving health care and attempting to contain medical
costs. On the other side have been many Republicans, who view the measure
as an unprecedented intrusion into the private lives of citizens by
telling them they have to buy a certain product — in this case, health
insurance.

Chief Justice John Roberts announced the court’s complicated 5-to-4
decision that allows the law to proceed with its goal of covering more
than 30 million uninsured Americans.

The Associated Press reported that the court did have some
concerns with the law’s expansion of Medicaid, the government-funded
insurance program for low-income Americans. But the court said the
expansion could go forward as long as the federal government doesn’t
threaten to withhold states’ entire Medicaid allotment if they don’t take
part in the law’s extension, the news service said.

The court’s four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined Roberts in the decision.
Conservative justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas voted against the law.

The law set in motion a series of reforms designed to extend health
coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. It seeks to
accomplish these goals in several ways. More lower-income people will be
allowed to enroll in Medicaid, while other uninsured individuals can buy
coverage through new state health insurance exchanges. Some people who buy
coverage may qualify for tax credits.

The 2010 law’s most controversial component — and one of the key
targets of the Supreme Court‘s scrutiny — requires almost all Americans
to maintain health insurance coverage or pay a penalty in the form of a
tax.

The law also aims to improve the quality and efficiency of health care.
For example, there are programs to improve care coordination and reduce
fraud and abuse in Medicare, the government-run insurance program for
older and disabled Americans.

A number of the law’s most popular provisions are already in effect.
For instance, parents in private insurance plans that offer dependent
coverage can keep their adult children on the plan up to age 26. And most
plans must now cover preventive health screenings, such as mammograms and
colonoscopies, at no out-of-pocket cost to the patient.

Core elements of the law — such as expanding Medicaid, establishing
the state health insurance exchanges and requiring people to have coverage
or pay a penalty, known as the “individual mandate” — aren’t scheduled to
take effect until 2014.

Reaction to the court’s decision was swift and divided.

Dr. Jeremy Lazarus, president of the American Medical Association, said
his group “has long supported health insurance coverage for all, and we
are pleased that this decision means millions of Americans can look
forward to the coverage they need to get healthy and stay healthy.

“This decision protects important improvements, such as ending coverage
denials due to pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps on insurance, and
allowing the 2.5 million young adults up to age 26 who gained coverage
under the law to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies,”
Lazarus said in a news release. “The expanded health care coverage upheld
by the Supreme Court will allow patients to see their doctors earlier
rather than waiting for treatment until they are sicker and care is more
expensive. The decision upholds funding for important research on the
effectiveness of drugs and treatments and protects expanded coverage for
prevention and wellness care, which has already benefited about 54 million
Americans.”

American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown said the court’s decision
“will benefit America’s heart
health for decades to come. Questions about the Affordable Care Act’s
constitutionality have overshadowed the law’s progress. With this
ruling, that uncertainty has finally been put to rest.

“By upholding the law, the nation’s highest court has sent a clear
message that patients should be the first priority in an ever-changing
health care arena. The court’s action in support of the ACA helps remind
us what’s really important — enabling all Americans to obtain
affordable, quality health care,” she said in a news release.

Democrats applauded the court’s decision, while Republicans were
disappointed.

At a midday press conference, President Obama, one of the law’s
architects who had succeeded with health care reform where predecessors as
far back as Franklin Roosevelt had failed, said: “Today I am as confident
as ever that when we look back five years from now, or 10 years from now,
or 20 years from now, we will be better off because we had the courage to
pass this law and keep moving forward.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a speech on the
Senate floor after the ruling: “No longer will Americans be a heart attack
or a car crash away from bankruptcy. No longer will Americans live in fear
of losing their health insurance because they lose their job,” the
Washington Post reported.

Congressional Republicans and GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney
have pledged to try to repeal the law after the November elections.

“What the court did not do in its last day in session, I will do on the
first day as president of the United States. And that is, I will act to
repeal ‘Obamacare,'” Romney said after the decision was announced, ABC
News reported.

Polls have shown that Americans remain sharply divided over the health
care law. But a Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll in January found
that an increasing number of Americans were slowly starting to embrace
some key components of the legislation.

To be sure, Americans remain divided over the legislation, with
slightly more than one-third (36 percent) of adults saying they wanted the
law repealed and 21 percent saying they wanted it to remain as is. Another
25 percent said they’d like to see only certain elements of the law
modified, the poll found.

“The public is still divided, mainly on partisan lines, as to whether
to implement or repeal all, parts, or none of the health care reform
bill,” said Harris Poll Chairman Humphrey Taylor.

The poll found that support for the legislation broke down along party
lines. Almost two-thirds of Republicans (63 percent) said they wanted the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act repealed, compared to 9 percent
of Democrats.

But while respondents were split about the law as a whole, many
strongly supported key elements of the bill, with 71 percent of those
polled now backing the provision that prevents insurance companies from
denying coverage to those already sick, for example.

The notable exception remains the individual mandate [the requirement
that all adults purchase health insurance], “which remains deeply
unpopular,” Taylor said.

In February 2011, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that
savings from the Affordable Care Act would cut the federal deficit by $210
billion during the next decade.

The law’s supporters argue that without the requirement that people
have insurance coverage while they’re healthy, there won’t be enough money
in the risk pool to pay to take care of them when the need for health care
eventually — and inevitably — arises.

“If people don’t feel like paying, then get sick and go to the
emergency room or the hospital, those people’s costs will be added on to
our insurance bills as they are today, which makes it much more
expensive,” said John Rother, president of the National Coalition on
Health Care, which works to achieve reform of the U.S. health-care
system.

But opponents say that the cost-cutting provisions probably won’t work.

Devon Herrick, a health economist at the free-market National Center
for Policy Analysis, said the law set up a “slippery slope” that will
increase costs, not lower them.

“If Congress and company have the legal authority to decide the minimum
coverage you must have, all manner of lobbyists and special interests and
providers for specific diseases will descend on Washington and state
capitals, as they always have, to make sure that their respective services
are covered by that mandate,” Herrick said.

In the two years since its passage, the Affordable Care Act has been
the target of multiple lawsuits, with a handful of cases working their way
through the federal appellate court system before the Supreme Court heard
oral arguments in March.

More information

The Kaiser Family Foundation has a primer on the
Supreme Court’s review of the health-care reform law.