The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the fate of the health reform law March 26-28. Attorneys will have a total of five-and-a-half hours over three days in which to argue specific questions related to the controversial law, the Supreme Court said in a Dec. 19 announcement.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in March 2010, calls for greatly expanding the number of Americans who will have access to health coverage.
Rulings in lower courts have been split. The largest of the lawsuits pits the attorneys general of 26 states, led by Florida, against the federal government over the insurance mandate. Those states consider insurance a product that individuals may not want or need, while the federal government has argued that all Americans need medical care at some point, and uninsured individuals rack up billions in uncompensated costs that insurers must pass on to their covered customers.
At the Supreme Court, several consolidated lawsuits (Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida [11-398]; National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius [11-393]; and Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services [11-400]) seek decisions on legal challenges around the requirement that all individuals have a minimum level of health insurance or pay a tax penalty and questions around federal powers to force states to expand Medicaid eligibility and thus incur tremendous costs.
The Supreme Court is considering four legal questions to be argued for a set time over the three days.
[See also: Supreme Court to rule on the healthcare law.]
• March 26: Whether the Anti-Injunction Act bars the lawsuit that challenges the insurance coverage mandate before it goes into effect in 2014 (1 hour);
• March 27: Whether Congress has the power under Article 1 of the Constitution, or the commerce clause, to regulate economic inactivity in order to mandate minimum coverage (2 hours);
• March 28: Whether Congress exceeded its powers in mandating minimum coverage, and if so, is the law in its entirety invalidated or to what extent can the individual mandate be separated from the remainder of the law (1½ hours);
• March 28: Whether Congress exceeded its powers by forcing states to accept an expansion of Medicaid costs and administration under pain of losing Medicaid funding (1 hour).
The Supreme Court justices are expected to deliver their decision during summer 2012, which will make it a focus of the November presidential elections.