Title: Affordable Care Act cases | law cases | Britannica
Headings: Affordable Care Act cases
Affordable Care Act cases
law cases
District and appellate decisions

Content: v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al.; and Department of Health and Human Services et al. v. Florida et al. — in which the U.S. Supreme Court on June 28, 2012, upheld key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA; also called the Affordable Care Act), a comprehensive reform of U.S. health care passed by Congress and signed into law by Pres. Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The specific questions that were decided by the court included: ( 1) whether Congress exceeded its enumerated powers in Article I of the U.S. Constitution (including its power to lay taxes and to regulate interstate commerce) by requiring that most Americans obtain health insurance by January 1, 2014, or pay a fine (the minimum-coverage provision, also called the “ individual mandate ”) and (2) whether Congress unduly “coerced” state governments into increasing their contributions to Medicaid —the national health insurance program for the poor, jointly funded by the federal government and the states—by revising eligibility requirements to add up to 17 million beneficiaries to the program by 2022. The court also considered, as a preliminary matter, the question of whether it was barred from hearing challenges to the individual mandate by the Anti-Injunction Act (1867), which generally prohibits the federal courts from hearing lawsuits intended to restrain “the assessment or collection of any tax” before it has gone into effect. For political as well as constitutional reasons, the Affordable Care Act cases were among the most significant to reach the Supreme Court in a generation.