SUPREME DAY OF ANXIETY
Obamacare faces do-or-die ruling
IT IS D-DAY for Obamacare — and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers will lose benefits if the Supreme Court strikes down all of the divisive health care law.
The country’s highest court will rule Thursday on the constitutionality of President Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment — a historic decision that will reshape the already close White House race.
The ruling on the Affordable Care Act — the most anticipated Supreme Court judgement since the case that decided the 2000 presidential election — could have devastating impacts for New Yorkers. More than 150,000 New York State residents under age 26 who now get insurance through their parents’ plans will lose that benefit if the law is thrown out, according to an analysis by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.
“Rarely has the health care of so many depended on the opinions of so few,” said the 2013 mayoral hopeful. “The Affordable Care Act has already made a huge difference in the lives of millions of city residents.”
With the nation holding its collective breath, many of New York’s youth were nervous about their futures.
“It would just be another issue that as a young adult I would have to worry about,” said Natelege Whaley, 23, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who graduated from Howard University last year. “For a young adult who’s not necessarily stable yet in their career, it will leave some people stuck.”
Further, more than 230,000 local Medicare recipients would lose their prescription-drug discounts — a total of $159.9 million in 2011. And New Yorkers would no longer receive rebates if their health care providers overbill them — which led to $86.5 million in savings a year ago. “Losing these benefits with the stroke of a pen would be unthinkable,” said Stringer. “This law is not only constitutional, it is a lifesaver.”
The complex bill is a multipart solution to the nation’s health care woes, not the least of which is the thorny issue of how to care for some 50 million Americans who lack health insurance.
Many of the law’s biggest provisions — like the controversial individual mandate, which requires that most everyone have insurance or pay a fine — haven’t yet been implemented. A study by the Urban Institute estimated that half a million city residents would get access to health insurance if the law is allowed to take full effect in 2014.
The White House has repeatedly claimed that the law is con- stitutional and has aggressively defended the most popular components of the legislation.
Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has joined congressional Republicans in denouncing the law, which he has vowed to repeal on his first day in office if elected. But the Republican’s opposition has sometimes been awkward, since Obamacare was modeled in part on Romneycare — the health care plan the ex-governor oversaw from the statehouse in Massachusetts but now repudiates.
The majority of the Supreme Court justices are conservative, leading many bench-watchers to predict that at least some of the law is vulnerable. The most likely target for a judicial death, experts said, is the individual mandate — seen by conservatives as an unAmerican infringement on personal freedom.
“I could see the court tossing the mandate, but then leaving much of the rest in place, arguing: ‘That’s not our job to fix; that’s between you — Congress — and the White House,” said Bruce Haynes, whose consulting firm Purple Strategies represents many health care providers.
Tossing the mandate — the engine designed to pay for the more popular parts of the law — would be the worst of all outcomes, some Democrats argued. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates such a move would mean about 20 million more people would be without insurance — and there would be a 15% spike in private health care insurance premiums.
But if the mandate alone is knocked down by the court, the House Republicans vowed Wednesday to kill the rest down the road — a looming political battle that makes this fall’s fight for partisan supremacy on Capitol Hill that much more important. “If the court does not strike down the entire law, the House will move to repeal what’s left of it,” said Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
Dr. Steven Corwin, CEO of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, argued that at some point the nation and its lawmakers must “move beyond the politics” of health care regulation.
“If in fact everyone agrees that cost, access and quality health care are the three crucial issues,” he said, “and if we are now saying the mechanism by which certain Americans will be given access to health care is unconstitutional, then we have to have a national discussion as to how to cover more Americans.”