What was the Supreme Courts ruling for the Affordable Health

What was the Supreme Court\'s ruling for the Affordable Health Care Act? Explain in detail.

Solution

Context

Under the scenario existing before the Supreme Court ruling, the Affordable Care Act, also popularly known as Obamacare, advocated that federal tax credit (in form of subsidies) should be available for eligible American citizens living both in states with their own regulated exchanges and for states where health exchanges are run by the federal government. At that time, there were 16 states with their own health exchanges and 34 states with health exchanges run by the federal government.

Opposition Stand

The people advocating against the law opined that the text referred in the law was broken or not substantially clear, and hence the government should not move ahead with this law. The major concern was that in some states (without a health exchange), the state authorities would have to establish an exchange.

Supreme Court Ruling

The supreme court ruling (with 6 in favor and 3 opposition) upheld the provision of national tax subsidies to all eligible American citizens across the 50 states who are using states and federal health exchanges.

The Numbers

According to an estimate at the time of ruling in 2015, some 10.5 million people were paying insurance premium through state-owned exchanges, while 6.4 million people were receiving subsidies in those states where the health exchanges were not set up. If the decision would have been against the ACA law, the people would have lost nearly $1.7 billion worth of subsidies per month.