The Obamacare Challenge: The Questions Before the Supreme Court and Their Portents for Congress

The Constitution/Civil Liberties

The Obamacare Challenge: The Questions Before the Supreme Court and Their Portents for Congress

by Robert Alt, Edmund Haislmaier

The Heritage Foundation

March 22, 2012

Backgrounder

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear challenges to Obamacare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) centered on the constitutionality of the legislation’s individual mandate and Medicaid expansion. From a legal perspective, the Court’s decision will serve as a significant precedent with respect to what limits, if any, still apply to congressional authority—fundamentally, whether the federal government remains one of limited powers. From a health policy perspective, for every possible outcome—including the Supreme Court either upholding or striking down the totality of Obamacare—Congress will have to take some kind of action in response. Congress’s best course is to repeal Obamacare, or what remains after the Court has done its work, and then adopt real, patient-centered reforms like those put forward in The Heritage Foundation’s Saving the American Dream.

URL: thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2012/pdf/bg2669.pdf