November 30th, 2011
Giulia Stavropoulos
One of the biggest, and possibly most obvious, issues with health insurance is that many Americans are unable to afford it. On November 14th, 2011, the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari, reviewing a prior decision that was made by the United States Court of Appeals to declare a mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) unconstitutional. This specific mandate required all people to have at least the minimal coverage requirement for heath insurance.
In addition to reviewing this decision, the Supreme Court specifically decided to review the Medicaid expansion that was incorporated in the ACA. The ACA proposed to add Medicaid expansions to cover qualified adults under the age of sixty-five and would supposedly add an addition sixteen million Americans to Medicaid’s policy. The government would pay for the first three years of expansion, but would then rely on states’ share that would grow to ten percent. The states originally challenged this expansion believing that it was unwarranted due to the possibility of Medicaid losing all its funding, consequently negatively affecting the states for which Medicaid holds the largest source of federal funding. This case will be argued in front of the Supreme Court in mid-2012 and will be decided in the summer.
There are numerous opinions on the proper healthcare coverage and insurance plan mostly due to the fact that being covered with health insurance is an important issue to all Americans, especially in today’s economic crisis. It is possible that this case will bring positive changes to the Affordable Care Act, and hopefully positive changes to all Americans who are at risk of losing all of their income from unpredictable illnesses. But will it make all Americans sufficiently content? Probably not.
Is it beneficial for Medicaid to implement this expansion? Could this specific case bring us any closer to satisfying everyone’s needs?
Further reading:
Care And Cost:
The New York Times:
