From the SCOTUS Blog in Plain English: ( Opinion now available here )
Amy Howe:
"The Affordable Care Act, including its individual
mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is
constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground
that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the
states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five
Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to
buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing
power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the
Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were
constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply
with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their
funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is
constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they
didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their
funding"
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