By Sara Rosenbaum, Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor, Health Law and Policy, George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. This post is part of an ACSblog online symposium around oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act.
When the curtain rises on the Affordable Care Act arguments before the United States Supreme Court, the nation will be fully engaged in what is perhaps the most important legal examination in generations regarding Congress’s constitutional powers to tackle issues of unsurpassed social and economic concern. Although Chief Justice Roberts has likened the role of the courts to that of an umpire in a baseball game, one can hope that the Justices will view the case for its broader significance for the health care system as a whole, as well as for the 32 million children and adults whose access to health insurance rests great measure in their hands. A declaration that the Act is unconstitutional will not merely nullify its provisions. Under federal budgeting principles, it will effectively roll the federal health reform spending baseline back to zero. The likelihood that Congress will, anytime soon, find the $1.5 trillion needed to make coverage affordable for nearly all Americans is slim to nil, something that the Act’s opponents frankly are banking on.
It was perhaps inevitable that health care would be the issue to trigger a full-throated debate over the constitutional relationship between the federal government and American society. The signature domestic policy achievement of the Obama Administration, the Act stands as a testament to lawmakers’ ability to devise national solutions that simultaneously weave a wide array of existing laws – Medicaid for the poorest Americans, tax subsidies for low and moderate income individuals and families, and federal laws that regulate the behavior of insurers in the marketplace – into a complex legislative intervention of universal scope and impact.
together – federal, state and local – to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”
