Health Care Reform: Constitutional or Not

Kerry Ngan

The Supreme Court deliberates whether President Barack Obama’s health care insurance, the Affordable Care Act, is constitutional or not. By branding this unconstitutional they will destroy one of President Obama’s major achievement in his presidency . The supreme justices have offered severely divided points of views.

Chronology of some of the key dates since the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act was signed into law and when arguments on its contituionality will be heard before the Supreme Court March 26-28; also includes summaries of the four legal questions being addressed. MCT 2012

The Affordable Care Act was put into place in 2009 to reduce the cost of healthcare for Americans who are unable afford it. It requires most Americans to purchase a health insurance by 2014 or face a financial penalty of up to 700 dollars a year.

The president himself says that he is confident justices on the Supreme Court will rule the health care constitutional. Millions of children have been given insurance coverage under the law, changes have been made to Medicare’s prescription drug program and that insurance industry reforms have already been put in place.

“This is not an abstract argument,” Obama declared quoted by CNN. “People’s lives are affected by the lack of availability of health care, the in-affordability of health care, their inability to get health care because of pre-existing conditions … I think the American people understand and I think that the justices should understand that in the absence of the individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to insure that people with pre-existing conditions can actually get health care.”

He also noted that since both congress chambers and signed into law by the president, ignoring such legislative stamp would be a judicial overreach.