It Ain’t Over Till … (Editorial)

The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Barack Obama a major victory on Thursday, upholding a key component of the Affordable Care Act by a comfortable 6-3 vote.

The ruling in King v. Burwell permits the government to continue to provide subsidies to help lower income Americans buy health insurance.

It’s the second time the highest court in the land has upheld Obamacare.

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “If at all possible, we must interpret the act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.”

The ruling prevents the mass confusion that would have resulted had the tax subsidies been invalidated, and Arkansas hospitals are surely breathing a sigh of relief. The number of uninsured patients admitted to hospitals in Arkansas dropped by nearly half in the first six months of 2014 when compared with 2013, said a survey released in November by the Arkansas Hospital Association and the Arkansas Chapter of the Healthcare Financial Management Association.

And though Arkansas’ innovative “private option,” which uses federal Medicaid expansion funds to buy private insurance for low-income people, accounts for much of that decline, about 58,000 subsidy-aided Arkansans have been able to buy insurance as well.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson voiced displeasure. “I am surprised at the lengths to which this court will go in an effort to stretch statutory interpretation to uphold the Affordable Care Act,” he said. He and other Republicans continue to call for the repeal of Obamacare.

Repeal, however, is highly unlikely to happen during this administration, under this president. The American people are going to have to decide whether they want to make this an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign as it was in 2012.