Supreme Court Allows Nationwide Health Care Subsidies

By Larry Grudzien
Attorney-At-Law

WASHINGTON – June 25, 2015 – The Supreme Court ruled that President Obama’s health care law may provide nationwide tax subsidies to help poor and middle-class people buy health insurance.
 
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion in the 6-to-3 decision. The court’s three most conservative members – Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. – dissented.
 
The case concerned a central part of the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative achievement. The law created marketplaces, known as exchanges, to allow people who lack insurance to shop for individual health plans.
 
Some states set up their own exchanges, but about three dozen allowed the federal government to step in to run them. Across the nation, about 85 percent of customers using the exchanges qualify for subsidies to help pay for coverage, based on their income.
 
The question in the case, King v. Burwell, No. 14-114, was what to make of a phrase in the law that seems to say the subsidies are available only to people buying insurance on “an exchange established by the state.”
 
For a copy of the decision, click here.
 

If you have any comments or questions regarding any of the above information, please do not hesitate to call me at (708) 717-9638 or e-mail me at larry@larrygrudzien.com.