TheUS supreme courthas ruled that a key provision of “Obamacare”, formally known asthe Affordable Care Act, is constitutional. The case challenged how members of an obscure but vital healthcare committee are appointed.
The committee, the US Preventive Services Task Force, is a panel of 16 volunteer health experts who determine which evidence-based preventive health services private insurance companies must cover without cost for patients.
The requirement is a provision of the ACA – and one of the few instances when privately insured American patients pay nothing for healthcare.
Critically, the court also held that members of the task force can be removed at will by the health secretary, and that the secretary may review their recommendations before they take effect.
The court issued the opinion in a 6-3 ruling. The opinion was written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and joined by John Roberts, Sonya Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In 2020 alone, an estimated 150 million Americans benefitted from the preventive healthcare provision, according to theO’Neill Instituteat the Georgetown University law center in Washington DC. Although the provision requires insurers to cover a wide range of services – from annual check-ups to cancer screenings and immunizations – the case centered on the provision of Prep, or pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV.
A small group of plaintiffs claimed provision of PrEP violated their religious beliefs. They were represented byJonathan Mitchell, the former solicitor general of Texas who pioneered the state’s “bounty hunter” abortion law.
Their arguments were backed by Republican and conservative groups, although the specific ACA provision was defended by both the Trump and Biden administrations. Major public health groups, hospitals, disease advocacy groups and Democratic attorneys general opposed ending the provision.
More details soon …