Gila County averted a potential health disaster this week as the new Conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court bypassed recent Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
The Supreme Court ruled that Texas, Arizona, and a handful of other Republican states did not have authority to move to repeal the 2010 federal law. In Arizona, the law expanded coverage to approximately 140,000 residents through federal insurance exchanges and an additional 600,000 residents through the expansion of coverage through the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. At the national level, it reduced the number of people without insurance by 70%.
The Biden government has now opened an additional window for applying for coverage and has increased the proportion of people who can get their premiums subsidized. Individuals earning up to $ 51,000 can now be insured for free because of the money included in the American Rescue Plan. The administration hopes to make the expanded subsidies permanent. The expansion includes rewards for individuals and families that represent up to 400% of a federal poverty level.
Half of those who are now applying for mid-range plan coverage at healthcare.gov can likely be covered for $ 10 a month or less, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. An estimated 25% of those who already have a plan are likely to be able to cut their premiums significantly.
The government has also resumed commercialization of the Affordable Care Act’s plans in hopes of reversing a three-year decline in enrollments that has increased the proportion of the population without health insurance to around 11%.
The government has announced plans to bolster the ACA and add a public option to the range of private plans people can purchase through healthcare.gov, the online portal through which people can sign up for coverage.
President Biden has so far opposed calls by progressives in the Democratic Party to simply provide the entire population with a version of Medicare for retirees – essentially to replace employer-provided health plans. The US is currently the only advanced developed country without universal health care, even though we spend two to three times as much on health care per capita.
Most Republicans have supported efforts to repeal the ACA and have opposed efforts to expand coverage or add a public option.
Gila county residents have benefited significantly from the coverage of the Affordable Care Act – 29% of the county’s residents rely on AHCCCS for their health care – approximately 15,000. That’s an 11% increase over the past year, according to AHCCCS.
In Navajo County, 54% of residents rely on AHCCCS. The 59,000 people enrolled in June represent a 7% increase over the past year.
In Apache County, 56% rely on AHCCCS. The number of 40,000 enrolled people has increased by 5% in the past year.
Children make up about 40% of the people covered by AHCCCS, poor elderly people in nursing homes make up about 3% and the seriously mentally ill another 3%. Single mothers also make up a large part of the insured population.
Some observers had predicted that the new Conservative majority in the Supreme Court would uphold two lower court judgments that essentially overturned the law. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that a regulation by the Court of Auditors that fines people without health insurance is unconstitutional. A coalition of Republican-led states, including Arizona, then filed a new lawsuit, saying the elimination of the single mandate would make the entire law unconstitutional.
If the court had overturned the law, an estimated 21 million people would have lost their medical care, according to the Urban Institute. This includes young adults who are allowed to stay in the parents’ tariff up to the age of 26. This would also have repealed the provisions according to which all insurance plans must cover “previous illnesses” without higher tariffs being charged for individuals.
However, the US Supreme Court ruled this week that the Republican states were not harmed by passing the bill – and therefore have no legal power to challenge it. The judges didn’t really rule on the underlying legal reasoning of Arizona’s Attorney General Mark Brnovich and others. Brnovich is now running for the U.S. Senate, which could give him another chance to vote in the Senate to repeal the law.
The court did not rule on the underlying allegations that the law was unconstitutional, but legal experts say the law now appears safer than ever since it was passed a decade ago.
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