WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court could wipe away health insurance for millions of Americans when it resolves the latest fight over President Barack Obama’s health overhaul. But would the court take away a benefit from so many people? Should the justices even consider such consequences?
By month’s end, the court is expected to decide a challenge to the way subsidies, in the form of tax credits, are given to people who get their insurance through the Affordable Care Act. The legal issue is whether Congress authorized payments regardless of where people live, or only to residents of states that established their own insurance exchanges.
The distinction is potentially momentous, since more than two-thirds of the states did not set up their own exchanges. In those states, people rely on the federal healthcare.gov site to sign up for insurance.
The financial benefits are substantial, covering nearly three-fourths of insurance premiums on average.
Rulings
If the court rules that the subsidies can’t be given to people who enrolled on the federal site, 7 million to 9 million Americans would quickly lose their insurance, said Nicholas Bagley, a health law expert at the University of Michigan and a supporter of the law known as “Obamacare.”
“The consequences of a government defeat here are so extraordinary and sweeping,” he said.
Since the New Deal, the Supreme Court has almost always upheld major new government programs and legislation as allowable under the Constitution. That was the case with Social Security in the 1930s, the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and, most recently, the health care law in 2012.
