Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare Mostly: What This Means to You - How do you feel about the SCOTUS ruling?

[Cafe Steph]

Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare Mostly: What This Means to You

Posted by Adriana Velez on June 28, 2012

As they were expected to do today, the Supreme Court ruled on the Obama administration's Affordable Health Care Act. And it looks like they upheld most of it, five to four. The individual mandate still stands. Conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ruled with the majority.

News outlets are scrambling now to analyze the ruling and figure out the details of SCOTUS' ruling. It's complicated. But we have a few ideas of what this ruling will mean to Americans.

According to the SCOTUS ruling, the individual mandate says that you must have coverage (public or private) by 2014 or face a tax penalty. By 2016, when the law is fully in place, that tax penalty will be close to $695 per person. There is some speculation that young, healthy people will do the math and decide to just pay the tax penalty rather than pay for health insurance.

More from The Stir: Highlights of the Supreme Court Arguments on Obamacare

It appears that there are provisions for people who refuse to comply with the mandate if they can demonstrate they have religious or financial issues with it. I'm not positive about that, though -- analysts are still looking into it.

Insurance companies will be required to take anyone, regardless of health. They will not get to charge sick people more for their policy than healthy people.

States will be able to expand Medicaid to cover more people. This means more people will qualify for Medicaid IF their state chooses to participate in that expansion. However, SCOTUS struck down the federal government's right to withhold Medicaid funding from states that choose not to participate in the expansion. So if you're hoping to qualify for Medicaid under the new law, you'll have to wait and see what your state decides to do.

This ruling will make the health care law even more of a hot button issue with the election. Obama will claim this as a victory. Romney will use it as a reason for change in the White House.

How do you feel about the SCOTUS ruling? Do you think it will affect you and your family?

[buttersworth]

Shimamab, I'm not an expert but from what I have read, employers will be fined $750 per employee for not offering them health insurance. I have also read that companies pay well over $750 per year for health insurance for each employee. It would make sense to me that it would cost more than the penalty for not having it. Therefore, I would expect companies to say, "ok, then we'll just pay the penalty" instead.

That's what I imagine may happen. It certainly is possible.

Quoting asfriend:

It's not breaking the law.

It is an option to pay the tax.

It is the whole idea, to get people out of private insurance and into the Government plan - please though, please do not let facts get in the way of your devotion.

Quoting shimamab:

Fingers crossed they don't de-unionize and decide to break the law, then.

Quoting buttersworth:

There is a Union

also, benefits have always been a tool to attract employees

Quoting shimamab:

If they provide it now without legally having to, why do you think they'd stop when it's the law? I'm confused

Quoting buttersworth:

The penalty to employers for not offering health insurance is cheaper than offering it. So yes, I think it will affect my family. I think my husband's employer will probably opt out of offering health insurance. His employer is large and already leaves lots of decisions to the bean counters. So if he no longer gets it from his employer, we will be paying more for health coverage which I read would be on average $15,ooo per year, per family. If this figure is correct, we will be in a world of financial hurt. He makes decent money but the price of everything has gone up and his wages haven't increased at the same level in the last 10 years. So we already slowly have been living with less and less. Unless his employer miraculously decides to continue paying more for health coverage than they would paying the penalty - we, personally, are going to go from middle class into poverty.