Is the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional?

Late last week, the 11th Circuit  US Court of Appeals ruled that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional due to the fact that it forces all Americans to enter into a contract with a private institution.  This was the first unconstitutional ruling from a Democratic judge.  This case is not settled, as the US Court of Appeals in Virginia and Washington, DC, are going to rule on this law later this fall.  It is likely that the US Supreme Court will have to serve final say on whether the ACA is valid or not.

The Supreme Court does have options, though according to the Wall Street Journal: Should the Supreme Court adopt that reasoning on "severability"—leaving the law in place except for the mandate—it could throw the health-insurance market into turmoil. That's because other parts of the law require health insurers to accept all prospective customers, even those who are already ill. In the drafting of the legislation, insurers were willing to accept the provision only if they were guaranteed an influx of millions of new customers through the coverage mandate. Minus the mandate, the law could encourage people to wait until they were sick to acquire coverage, and the partisan divide in Congress could make it difficult to amend the law to fix that problem.


The Hub took a moment to explain the current situation:



This November at the Healthcare Insurance Exchange Congress, Andrew Berenato, Director of Government & Corporate Relations, Southern Region, AmeriHealth Mercy, will be leading a panel of experts to debate the Healthcare Exchanges and the ACA. For more information the event,download the brochure.

 Do you think the ACA is infringing on individuals’ rights by penalizing those who don’t want insurance?