Supreme Court Upholds Health Care Law; Mass. Reacts
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, today ruled that the core of the embattled Affordable Care Act legislation was Constitutional and that Congress could mandate that Americans get health insurance or face a penalty.
According to the SCOTUS blog sponsored by Bloomberg Law, where the court's landmark opinion was described as it was announced, Justice Anthony Kennedy, speaking for the dissenters, said the "entire act before us is invalid in its entirety." Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the majority in the 5-4 ruling.
Read the decision here.
Politicians, members of the health care industry and others in Massachusetts quickly reacted. Here's what they said:
-- House Speaker Robert DeLeo: "This is an issue that has divided our country now for a period of time, and hopefully we can put it past us and move forward. But most importantly, what the law provides in terms of health care for all the citizens in this country I think it is very important. Although I will say I think we here in Massachusetts have been ahead of the game as we always are here in Massachusetts in terms of what we did in providing health care for all our citizens. I think as a matter of fact we are probably approaching something like 99 percent. So I think it has shown that it does work in Massachusetts and I think it can work across America as well.
-- Senate President Therese Murray: "It is very good news for the people of the country. Here we are on prostate awareness day, if you had a pre-existing condition, you wouldn't be covered for prostate cancer. How ridiculous is that? I think they made the right decision. I'm very happy that they did it. Of course Massachusetts has always been at the forefront. We still have our insurance, but this means we will continue to receive the money from Medicaid with our expansion, with the expansion that we did."
-- The Massachusetts Medical Society was pleased with the ruling. "Universal coverage is a state-federal partnership - no state can do this on its own," said MMS President Richard Aghababian. "We've accomplished a great deal since 2006 - and there's still a lot of work to do."
-- National Federation of Independent Businesses State Director Bill Vernon said the ruling "guarantees that Massachusetts residents will have their most personal health care decisions made by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington and in other states whom they've never met and whom they'll have a hard time influencing in the future. The tragedy in this ruling is that Massachusetts residents are now at the mercy of politicians from other states and bureaucrats in Washington whose decisions won't be based on what is best for Massachusetts. Small businesses here will be overwhelmed by mandates, taxes and burdens imposed on them by people whom we cannot as easily hold accountable."
-- Benjamin Day, Mass-Care: "This is good news for the millions of uninsured American residents who will receive subsidized health care when subsidies start going into effect in 2014! I do have concerns about how the individual mandate works - it essentially places the entire burden of sky-rocketing health care costs, which are caused by profit-driven health care companies, on the shoulders of uninsured families. In short, it turns a financial crisis caused by our disfunctional health care system, and it into a crisis for lower-income families. Our experience in Massachusetts tells us that national reform will lead to a large expansion of insurance coverage, a more moderate improvement in access to care, but troubling rises in underinsurance and either no impact or acceleration of health care costs."
-- Sen. John Kerry: "This is an important day for the Supreme Court and an important day for Americans who need affordable health care coverage. But I hope this will also be an important day for our politics and our discourse. For the past three years, opponents of health reform did everything they could to distort and deceive. They tried to scare the American public with outright lies about 'death panels' and 'socialized medicine.' When that didn't work, they came up with a new strategy: claim that the individual mandate the Republican Party itself had invented was unconstitutional. Today, the conservative Roberts Court put an end to that debate. We need to get back to the business of implementing a constitutional law that will lower health care costs for everyone and give 33 million Americans the health coverage they deserve."
-- Mass. Association of Health Plans President and CEO Lora Pelligrini: "We are pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Many of the consumer protections included in the Affordable Care Act were already in place in Massachusetts. MAHP and our member health plans will continue our efforts with state and federal policymakers on implementing the Affordable Care Act in Massachusetts."
Material from State House News Service was used in this report.
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