High court weighs hearing arguments on health-care law
WASHINGTON -- The case is shaping up to be the most contentious at the Supreme Court in more than a decade, but everyone involved agrees at least on one point: They need to know as soon as possible whether the new health-care law is constitutional.
The legislation, whose passage consumed much of President Obama's first year in office, extends insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans through various measures including the expansion of Medicaid and a mandate that most Americans buy health insurance by 2014.
Obama says the law is critical to improving medical care nationwide, but Republican critics warn it would put new financial burdens on states, hurt small businesses and undermine individual choices about care.
Beyond the highly charged politics surrounding the law, legal questions loom.
Individuals who have shunned insurance need to know whether they will be forced to buy coverage or face a tax penalty. Government agencies need to know what regulations to put in place. Employers need to know what incentives or penalties they might have related to employee coverage. And states need to know their costs under Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor, as eligibility expands.
The high court will meet in private Thursday to decide whether to hear arguments in the dispute that has split lower courts and become the most politically divisive case since the Bush v. Gore presidential election dispute in 2000. Another lower court weighed in Tuesday, upholding the law in a decision by prominent conservative Judge Laurence Silberman, a 1985 appointee of Ronald Reagan.
Until the high court rules, the National Federation of Independent Business tells the justices in a brief, "the entire nation will remain mired in doubt" over future costs.
The group says that uncertainty "imposes an enormous drag on the economy."
At stake, Justice Department lawyers say, is a central piece of a regulation intended to address "a profound and enduring crisis in the market for health care."
The litigation that began almost as soon as Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in March 2010 has taken on an increasing sense of urgency.
"The stakes are huge going into the case," says Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan. "The case will determine how much power the federal government has to deal with life in the 21st century, health care being among the most important issues."
The answer is likely to come next summer as the court finishes up its annual term, just before the Republican and Democratic conventions for the 2012 presidential election.
The justices are all but certain to take up disputes over the law.
They have discretion in what appeals they consider, but they almost always accept petitions from the U.S. solicitor general when an act of Congress has been invalidated.
The White House has compared the health-care law to the landmark Social Security Act of 1935.
Attorneys for 26 states, among the many groups that sued over the law, counter that it wrongly imposes "new federal obligations on every corner of society."
'A hugely important case'
In their private conference room off the chambers of Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices also will take the first step toward determining the scope of their review and what questions they want answered.
