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Supreme Court to hear challenge to Obama's changes in U.S. healthcare system
The Washington Post
The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a challenge to the healthcare overhaul act passed in 2010, with a decision on President Obama’s most controversial domestic achievement likely to come in the summer of his reelection campaign.
The court said it will decide whether the Affordable Care Act exceeded Congress’s power by requiring almost all Americans to have health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty, a powerful constitutional question that will likely make it the court’s most high-profile ruling since Bush v. Gore in 2000.
As a mark of the importance of the case to the court headed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., justices said they will hear 5 1/2 hours of oral arguments on the constitutional question and related issues. Oral arguments will most likely be held in March over one or two days, with a decision expected before the court recesses in late June.
The White House welcomed the court’s announcement. “We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional and are confident the Supreme Court will agree,” White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) countered that the massive law is both unpopular in polls and with voters. “Senate Republicans have argued that this misguided law represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of the federal government into the daily lives of every American,” McConnell said.
