Article preview from "The Gray Sheet"- July 5, 2012
With the legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act exhausted by the Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling, politics will now control the fate of the device tax and the rest of the statute.
Article preview from "The Gray Sheet"- July 5, 2012
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision on June 28 to uphold the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and, with it, virtually the entire bill, this fall’s elections could provide the next best opportunity for repeal of the law’s device tax provision.
In the majority opinion led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the high court decided that the individual mandate, requiring that most Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional because the penalty paid for not buying insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power.
If the mandate had been ruled unconstitutional, the court could conceivably have voided the entire law, device tax included. But with the legal challenges exhausted, politics will now control the fate of the tax and the rest of the statute.
Industry remains vehemently opposed to the 2.3% excise tax, which is set to go into effect in January and contribute $29 billion over 10 years to pay for health reform. While the House passed a bill to repeal the impending tax June 7, opposition from the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House make repeal this session unlikely.
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