Affordable Care Act goes to Supreme Court

Josh Hoffman is insured, but a Supreme Court case being argued this week could… Josh Hoffman is insured, but a Supreme Court case being argued this week could change that.

Hoffman is 25 years old and the Affordable Care Act — the healthcare reform bill the Obama administration signed into law in March of 2010 — has allowed him to stay covered by his dad’s health insurance while he finishes law school at Pitt.

“Without this, I would not have insurance at the moment because it would be prohibitively expensive,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman does not have any medical conditions that he needs the insurance for, but for him, knowing he has the coverage is a weight off his mind.

“It’s a relief to know that if I get into an accident, I won’t be in a lifetime of debt for a broken foot,” he said.

This week, Hoffman and many others turned their attention to the Supreme Court, which concluded a three-day review of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, on Wednesday. The Court is expected to make a decision by June.

At the crux of the issue is a constitutional challenge to the law’s individual mandate, which was discussed in the Court on Tuesday. The mandate, if declared constitutional, would require most Americans to purchase health insurance.

The individual mandate is the Affordable Care Act’s most controversial provision, but some worry that if the mandate falls, the whole law will need to be rewritten.

If that happens, the law’s more popular provisions will fail as well — provisions like the one that takes away the ability of insurance companies to deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condition, or the one beneficial to students, which allows people to stay on their parents health insurance plan until they’re 26 instead of 22 years old.

Pitt law professor Dan Herring said that the case will most likely be decided based on the justices’ ideologies.

“There’s a very real possibility that this will be decided on partisan lines, and that’s sad,” Herring said.

Herring, who specializes in constitutional law, said that the constitutional discussion would be based around the Commerce Clause, which details what rights the federal government has to regulate commerce between the states.

If the Court rules that the law violates the commerce clause, then the individual mandate would be deemed unconstitutional.

Herring said the challengers will make a broad argument that this law has allowed the government to overstep its bounds. The federal government would have too much power to regulate things usually left to the states, and the new power to require citizens to purchase something, he said.

Herring said the administration’s lawyers may cite precedent, which has allowed the federal government to regulate cross-state commerce.

Herring expects the four liberal judges to support the law, and he said Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, arguing for the Obama Administration, will have to swing one of the five conservative judges, out of the nine total who sit on the Supreme Court, to support the Affordable Care Act as well.

In a press release, Pitt law professor Arthur Hellman called this case “possibly the most important constitutional case of our generation.”

He said that if the individual mandate falls, the provisions that state that insurance companies must cover those with pre-existing conditions and require those companies to lower their rates would have to fall as well. Rates would be prohibitively expensive without the mandate to increase insurance companies’ pool of customers.

Hellman added that the provision that allows young people to stay on their parents’ health plans might be in danger as well because it costs insurance companies more money to insure more people on the same plan, rather than people purchasing separate plans.

But he said that this issue was not discussed at length by the court on Wednesday when the justices heard arguments on how much of the law needs to be cut back.

Hellman also thought that the case was still too close to make any informed predictions.

“I wouldn’t bet money on either side right now. It’s pretty close,” Herring said.

The lawyers for both sides went home on Wednesday, but it could be months before the court comes to a decision. The  policy of the Supreme Court is to decide all cases by the end of the term, the Court’s yearly schedule for hearing cases. Hellman said most people in the law community think that the Court will take until the term ends in the last week of June to decide.

“I know three months seems like a long time, but that’s really not a lot of time for a case of this magnitude,” Hellman said.

Hoffman just wants to weather the storm.

“I just hope I’ll be insured by an employer by the time this all shakes down,” Hoffman said.