Lawyers for President Barack Obama made a high-stakes gamble on the way to the Supreme Court: If you strike down the individual mandate, they told the justices, you’ve also got to kill the guarantee of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.
All of a sudden, that’s looking like a bad bet.
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The conservative justices took turns beating up on the individual mandate during Tuesday’s oral arguments. And they’ll be back for more Wednesday morning in an hour-and-a-half session focused on what remains of the law if the individual mandate goes down.
There’s plenty there. In addition to the guaranteed coverage provision, the Affordable Care Act includes sweeping changes to the way insurers operate, incentives to change how providers deliver health care, an expansion of Medicaid and federal subsidies to help low- and middle-income families purchase insurance, and rules allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ policies.
But opponents say none of that would have passed Congress if the mandate wasn’t included. Health care experts say it’s not just a legal strategy to tie the mandate and pre-existing condition coverage together — bad things really will happen if the coverage stays and the mandate goes.
And now, the…
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