USA-COURT/HEALTH CARE ANALYST Supreme Court backs Obamacare rejecting conservative challenge

Record ID: 134692

  • Title: USA-COURT/HEALTH CARE ANALYST Supreme Court backs Obamacare rejecting conservative challenge
  • Date: 25th June 2015
  • Summary: WASHINGTON D.C., UNITED STATES (FILE) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE)(English) WILLIAM GALSTON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTE POLITICAL ANALYST SAYING: "The Affordable Care Act, popularly know as Obamacare, has been challenged politically, it's been challenged constitutionally and now it has been challenged as a matter of statutory interpretation. It has survived those three tests, and what t
  • Embargoed: 10th July 2015 13:00
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  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVADJ7WW60GGSM79YYA76PJP2K9W
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday (June 25) rejected a conservative legal challenge that could have doomed President Barack Obama's healthcare law, upholding nationwide tax subsidies crucial to his signature domestic policy achievement.
    Obama strode into the White House Rose Garden after the ruling to declare that the law known as Obamacare is working, helping millions of Americans afford health insurance who otherwise would have none, and that it is "here to stay."
    William Galson from the Brookings Institution in Washington said the court's decision would have implications for years to come.
    "This was a major decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that will have very important implications for the future of the U.S. healthcare system and the future of American politics" Galston told Reuters.
    Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, wrote in the 6-3 ruling that Congress clearly intended for the tax subsidies that help millions of low- and moderate-income people afford private health insurance to be available in all 50 states.
    The court decided that the law did not restrict the subsidies to states that establish their own online health insurance exchanges, as the challengers in the case contended.
    The question before the justices was whether a four-word phrase in the expansive law saying subsidies are available to those buying insurance on exchanges "established by the state" has been correctly interpreted by the administration to allow subsidies to be available nationwide.
    Galson said the court's decision makes it difficult for the law to be overturned by future administrations.
    "Obamacare has been challenged politically, it's been challenged constitutionally and now it has been challenged as a matter of statutory interpretation. It has survived those three tests, and what that means is that for better or for worse this healthcare reform is thoroughly embedded in the American healthcare system and the American society more generally and the next president, even if it's a Republican, will have a very, very difficult time reversing that fact."
    Republicans will keep attacking Obamacare in Congress and on the 2016 presidential election campaign trail to energize right-wing voters and raise money, but little chance exists of the law being rolled back before the end of Obama's presidency in January 2017, political analysts said.
    Obama said the law has been "woven into the fabric of America."
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