The ACA affirmed

Published June 26, 2015

Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, June 26, 2015.

Battered but intact, the Affordable Care Act survived its latest siege on Thursday.

By a solid 6-3 majority, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the subsidies provided through HealthCare.gov are lawful.

That means the federal exchange, which fills the gaps created when 36 states, including North Carolina, refused to build their own exchanges, can continue issuing subsidies for those who qualify. It also means fevered efforts by conservatives to demolish the ACA instead of improving it have fallen flat. Again.

It removes a cloud of uncertainty that had hovered over the landmark law and those it serves.

And it ensures that 6.4 million Americans — and 460,000 low-income and middle-class North Carolinians — who were receiving federal help with their insurance premiums under “Obamacare” will stay covered.

This case was as much about what the health care law’s authors meant versus what they said — four words that called into question whether the federal government could run health care marketplaces, or exchanges, in states that had refused to set them up. In the end, common sense and common decency won the day.

In writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that killing the subsidies would all but ruin the state markets, which could not have been Congress’ intent. “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote.

He added: “The combination of no tax credits and an ineffective coverage requirement could well push a State’s individual insurance market into a death spiral. It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner.”

In reference to flawed wording of the five-year-old law that opened it to this challenge, Roberts noted: “The argument that the phrase ‘established by the State’ would be superfluous if Congress meant to extend tax credits to both State and Federal Exchanges is unpersuasive.”

This was the second time Roberts has sided with the ACA. In a previous ruling, the court validated the health law’s mandate that Americans buy health insurance. This prompted Elon University law professor Steven Friedland to dub him “the chief protector of the Affordable Care Act.”

In a snarky dissent from the bench, Justice Antonin Scalia quipped: “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”

This was an enormous victory for President Obama. Most importantly, it avoids the human toll that would have resulted from an adverse ruling.

Next, North Carolina should expand Medicaid coverage for thousands of residents who still fall between the coverage cracks. State leaders should have expanded Medicaid in the first place, but seemed more intent on thumbing their noses at the president than doing what’s right. Not only is most of its cost paid for by the federal government, but also it would create as many as many as 43,000 jobs. Gov. Pat McCrory had said he wanted to wait for the Affordable Care decision first before considering that step. Now that the high court has ruled, it’s time for him to act.

http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/n_and_r_editorials/the-aca-affirmed/article_7e22fe04-1b8c-11e5-b179-9b0cd7cf50f8.html