WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans.
The justices said in a 6-3 ruling Thursday that the subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.
The outcome is the second major victory for Obama in politically charged Supreme Court tests of his most significant domestic achievement. Chief Justice John Roberts has again voted with his liberal colleagues to uphold a key portion of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
Roberts also was the key vote to uphold the law in 2012. Justice Anthony Kennedy was a dissenter in 2012, but was part of the majority on Thursday.
Roberts says in the majority opinion “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.”
SJustice Antonin Scalia has a new name for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul: “SCOTUScare.” Scalia summarized from the bench his dissent to the Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling to uphold the law’s nationwide tax subsidies. He says, quote, “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.” The conservative justice used the acronym for the Supreme Court.
He says his colleagues have twice stepped in to save the law from what Scalia considered worthy challenges.
President Barack Obama says his signature health care law “is here to stay.”
Obama spoke in the Rose Garden shortly after the Supreme Court upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under the health overhaul. The president noted the multiple challenges to the law, both in Congress and the courts. But he says the law is no longer about politics, but is about the benefits it is having on extending coverage to Americans and making health insurance more affordable.
Obama says that while there is still work to be done to make health care in the U.S. better, “this law is working.”
Nationally, 10.2 million people have signed up for health insurance under the Obama health overhaul. That includes the 8.7 million people who are receiving an average subsidy of $272 a month to help pay their insurance premiums.
Of those receiving subsidies, 6.4 million people were at risk of losing that aid because they live in states that did not set up their own health insurance exchanges.
Republican presidential candidates are reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a key part of the health care law. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee calls the ruling judicial tyranny. He says the court can’t “legislate from the bench” and “ignore the Constitution.”
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry says it’s not up to the Supreme Court to knock down the law — he says the nation needs leaders who would reject what he calls a “heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all policy.” Perry says the law “does nothing to help health outcomes for Americans.”