Today’s Managing Health Care Costs number is Six
That’s six of the Supremes. John Roberts wrote the opinion, and his fellow conservative Anthony Kennedy joined liberals Bader-Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan to uphold federal subsidies even in states that did not establish their own exchanges. That means that the Affordable Care Act has dodged another legal bullet.
I was in a train when the word broke –and there were “Six to three” conversations going on absolutely all through my car.
Here are some other numbers that COULD have been the featured number today
· 1332. That’s the section of the ACA that allows the President to waive elements of the ACA in states that want to “go their own way.” A Democrat could have used this to allow Vermont to go single payer (although that’s now off the table). A Republican could use that to undermine the individual mandate which could destabilize insurance markets. Wonkblog
· 6.4 million: That’s how many people would have seen their premiums quadruple if the subsidies were eliminated. They are concentrated in Texas, Florida and North Carolina. WaPost
· Three: That’s how many other major lawsuits the Wall Street Journal posits the ACA could face in coming years. (House R’s suit alleging executive branch overreach, Ohio suit alleging no authority to tax, and suits against the Payment Advisory Board after it becomes operational
I breathed a sigh of relief that the insurance market was not thrown into chaos by a ruling against the Affordable Care Act. Many Republicans did, too, as they had little chance to pass meaningful "bridge" legislation to avoid destabilizing insurance markets across the country. But there could always be another chapter.
