Just because the highest court in the land makes a definitive ruling on a landmark case, like the Affordable Care Act (ACA), don’t think for a minute there won’t be more legal challenges to the health reform law, especially in a presidential election year.
An interesting report in Politico says this is the case. Republicans and other opponents of the reform law, the article says, will not try to dismantle the entire piece in court this time around, but instead will focus on so-called “hot-button” issues to both challenge smaller segments of the law and rally conservative voters ahead of the November election.
The two top “red meat” targets are the law’s contraception mandate and the new Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board. Legal challenges to these two parts of the ACA are already working their way through the court system and are expected to see quicker action now that the Supreme Court has acted.
Conservative legal thinkers, the report says, are also pondering lawsuits to block the tax subsidies consumers would be able to get in 2014 if they buy coverage through health insurance exchanges. Apparently there is enough ambiguity in the reform law to mount a challenge in this area, the article notes.
What do you think? Will these new attempts to eliminate parts of the ACA gain any traction, or will it look like sour grapes on the part of anti-reform law activists bent on hurting President Obama in an election year?
Read the news article at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78104.html.
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