The Supreme Court has spoken and President Obama's 2010 health care law — including its controversial individual mandate — will stand.
In a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled that the law — known formally as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA — is “a valid exercise of Congress’s power to tax,” reports MSNBC.com's Tom Curry.
“It is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but (who) choose to go without health insurance,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion. “Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”
Curry further explains:
“The law, Roberts wrote, 'makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. And if the mandate is, in effect, just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.' “
The debate over the decision will be spirited, to say the least, and we'll include as much of the relevant analysis here as we can, including the following:
In the meantime, the Business Learning Institute's Karl Ahlrichs has some thoughts on what will happen next.
Ahlrichs is a senior consultant at Gregory and Appel (the oldest independently owned insurance agency in Indiana) and a national speaker and thought leader in wellness and workplace safety. He breaks down his analysis into two camps:
Key political points:
Key insurance issues:
Stay tuned …
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