The Supreme Court is expected to decide sometime this week whether the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Here’s a brief refresher course on what they’re deciding, what’s at stake and what happens next.
Remind me what, exactly, will the Supreme Court be deciding?
The Supreme Court is weighing four separate constitutional challenges to the Affordable Care Act. The one they spent the most time debating at oral arguments was the individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance. The Supreme Court justices will have to decide whether the Commerce Clause – which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce – creates the authority to enact such a requirement.
There are also three other issues that the Justices have to decide on (which you can read about in more detail here). They have to decide whether they can even rule on the substance of the case, since the provisions being challenged haven’t come into effect yet. They need to decide whether, if the individual mandate falls, it can be severed from the rest of the law, or takes down other provisions with it. And they must decide whether the law’s Medicaid expansion – which has the program cover everyone below 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Line – is constitutional. States challenging it have said it is unconstitutional, as it puts an undue burden on the states.
Keep reading: Everything you need to know about Obamacare and SCOTUS in one post.
