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Business Insurance/ - Article, Seg, 02 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
OPINION: Health care reform law
requires fast resolution by court
THE MOST SIGNIFICANT takeaway from last week"s
oral arguments on the health care reform law before
the Supreme Court was a near-consensus among the
justices that they should resolve the legal issues by the
end of the court"s current term in June.
Justices spanning a wide range of the ideological
spectrum were openly skeptical of arguments
presented by Robert Long, a court-appointed attorney,
that an obscure 1867 law prevents the court from
taking up the case until a tax has been paid—in this
case the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act"s
requirement that most U.S. residents either enroll in a
qualified plan or pay a penalty.
The individual mandate doesn"t take effect until 2014,
with the penalty for those not enrolled in a plan due in
2015. If the justices had accepted Mr. Long"s
argument that it is too soon to hear the case—which
we don"t think they did—the result would have been
years of uncertainty and potential chaos.
Consider the issue of prescription drug coverage that
some employers offer to Medicare-eligible retirees.
The health care reform law, effective next year, pares
a big tax break Congress extended to employers as
part of a 2003 law to encourage them to continue the
drug plans.
In response to the dilution of the tax break, many
employers are preparing to revamp or even eliminate
the retiree drug plans.
What if the Supreme Court were to wait until 2015 to
decide the future of the health care reform law and it
then strikes down the entire law, which presumably
would restore the prescription drug tax break?
Employers, at least in some cases, would have
changed their plans needlessly.
Of course, there are far bigger issues than that. By
2014, states are supposed to set up exchanges where
millions of previously uninsured people will use their
health care reform law premium subsidies to buy
coverage. If the justices were to strike down the law in
2015, think of all the time and money the states would
waste in establishing the exchanges.
Fortunately, if our reading of the justices" comments is
right and a court ruling is handed down in June, those
scenarios will not develop. And everyone should
welcome a quick resolution of the law"s future.
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