I just finished reading the Obamacare Supreme Court opinion.¹National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. ___ (2012), 132 S.Ct 2566. (pdf) Unfortunately, I’m still confused about how the decision should have gone down. The dissent does have a good summary of how the law was intended to work.

The whole design of the Act is to balance the costs and benefits affecting each set of regulated parties. Thus, individuals are required to obtain health insurance. Insurance companies are required to sell them insurance regardless of patients’ pre-existing conditions and to comply with a host of other regulations. And the companies must pay new taxes. States are expected to expand Medicaid eligibility and to create regulated marketplaces called exchanges where individuals can purchase insurance. Some persons who cannot afford insurance are provided it through the Medicaid Expansion, and others are aided in their purchase of insurance through federal subsidies available on health-insurance exchanges. The Federal Government’s increased spending is offset by new taxes and cuts in other federal expenditures, including reductions in Medicare and in federal payments to hospitals. Employers with at least 50 employees must either provide employees with adequate health benefits or pay a financial exaction if an employee who qualifies for federal subsidies purchases insurance through an exchange.

In short, the Act attempts to achieve near-universal health insurance coverage by spreading its costs to individuals, insurers, governments, hospitals, and employers–while, at the same time, offsetting significant portions of those costs with new benefits to each group. For example, the Federal Government bears the burden of paying billions for the new entitlements mandated by the Medicaid Expansion and federal subsidies for insurance purchases on the exchanges; but it benefits from reductions in the reimbursements it pays to hospitals. Hospitals lose those reimbursements; but they benefit from the decrease in uncompensated care, for under the insurance regulations it is easier for individuals with pre-existing conditions to purchase coverage that increases payments to hospitals. Insurance companies bear new costs imposed by a collection of insurance regulations and taxes, including “guaranteed issue” and “community rating” requirements to give coverage regardless of the insured’s pre-existing conditions; but the insurers benefit from the new, healthy purchasers who are forced by the Individual Mandate to buy the insurers’ product and from the new low income Medicaid recipients who will enroll in insurance companies’ Medicaid-funded managed care programs. In summary, the Individual Mandate and Medicaid Expansion offset insurance regulations and taxes, which offset reduced reimbursements to hospitals, which offset increases in federal spending.

Maybe I just need to read the opinion again, and maybe the cases it cites… ;-)

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  National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. ___ (2012), 132 S.Ct 2566. (pdf)