Before the coronavirus outbreak, the health care issue that kept millions of Americans up at night was the future of Obamacare, aka, the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare). Having already having survived two legal challenges, the ACA is now set to come under the U.S. Supreme Court’s scrutiny for a third time. The announcement came in early March. Obamacare in Court: Rounds 1 and 2 The first time Obamacare was found constitutional was in 2012 when the Supreme Court held that the law’s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance or pay a penalty was a legal exercise of Congress’s power to assess taxes. But the fun was just beginning. In 2015, the high court held that the federal government can provide nationwide tax subsidies to help poor and middle-class people buy health insurance, rejecting an argument that the subsidies were available only in states that had created marketplaces, known as exchanges, to allow people who lack insurance to shop for individual health plans. The Latest Court Case A new election and change in Court personnel inspired the third and latest challenge, this one from a group of twenty Republican state attorneys general and governors. The new challenge zeroed in on the…
