White House Preparing For Potential Outcomes On Healthcare Ruling.

The AP (6/19, Alonso-Zaldivar) reports, “Covering all the bases ahead of a momentous Supreme Court ruling, the Obama administration plans to move ahead with major parts of the president’s health care law if its most controversial provision does not survive, according to veteran Democrats closely involved with the legislation.” If the part of the bill that requires “that nearly every US resident have health insurance is declared unconstitutional, the remaining parts of the law would have far-reaching impact, putting coverage within reach of millions of uninsured people, laying new obligations on insurers and employers, and improving Medicare benefits even as payments to many service providers get scaled back.” A senior White House advisor said, however, that “President Obama is confident the whole law will be upheld when the court issues its ruling in the next week or two, but officials will be ready for any outcome.”
ACA Strikedown Would Complicate Who Pays For Uninsured ED Care. The Los Angeles Times (6/19, Levey) reports that the “Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, has been a bedrock principle of American healthcare – passed by a bipartisan Congress, signed by a Republican president and largely unchallenged since by hospitals and doctors.” However, one unresolved issue was who would pay for the care. That issue “helped shape President Obama’s 2010 healthcare law and its requirement that Americans get health insurance.” Now, according to the Times, “if the law, or just the insurance mandate, is struck down” by the Supreme Court, uninsured patients’ “bills will be passed on to taxpayers, hospitals and privately insured patients, as they have been for the last quarter century.”