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In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman maps what the combined impact of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and a plaintiff’s win in Halbig would look like and discusses the impact of court decisions on health policy.
The July Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that over half the public has an unfavorable view of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in July, up eight percentage points since last month, while the share viewing the law favorably held steady at just under four in ten. This month’s poll also explored the public’s reaction to the Supreme Court decision upholding craft store chain Hobby Lobby’s ability to deny workers coverage of certain contraceptives based on the company’s owners’ religious beliefs. The public overall is evenly split between those who approve and disapprove of the Court’s decision, with only a small difference in opinion between women and men, but deep divisions by party identification, ideology, and religious affiliation.
The July Kaiser Health Policy News Index finds the most closely followed news stories this month were discussions about how to deal with large numbers of unaccompanied minors arriving in the U.S. from Central America, military and political conflict between Israel and Hamas, and ongoing problems related to Veterans Affairs (or V.A.) medical facilities. Six in ten report closely following the Supreme Court’s decision in a case about whether for-profit companies should be required to cover birth control for women in their workers’ health plans (the Hobby Lobby case), and about half of the public is able to correctly identify the Court’s decision.
In a column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses if the legal court cases about whether the government can provide tax credits to people in the Affordable Care Act’s federal health exchanges will be perceived by the American people as a legitimate legal question or as more inside-Washington politics.
This was published as a Wall Street Journal Think Tank column on June 30, 2014. The Supreme Court decision upholding Hobby Lobby’s ability to refuse to cover certain contraceptive services based on its owners’ religious beliefs has set off a wave of analysis of what the decision means. That will not be resolved anytime soon.
This chart looks at the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case involving the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) contraceptive coverage requirement. It examines how the Court answered four key questions in the case.
One of the most politically polarizing elements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the law’s requirement that new private health insurance plans cover prescription contraceptives and services, including all methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
As the 15th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision approaches this month, a new brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation examines the legacy of the landmark civil rights ruling that the institutionalization of people with disabilities is illegal discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
June 2014 marks the 15th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s landmark civil rights decision in Olmstead v. L.C., finding that the unjustified institutionalization of people with disabilities is illegal discrimination. This issue brief examines the legacy of Olmstead, with an emphasis on legal case developments and policy trends emerging in the last five years and the related contributions of the Medicaid program.
The Supreme Court is expected to reach a decision by the end of June, 2014 on the cases brought forth by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, two for profit corporations challenging the ACA’s contraceptive coverage requirement. The plaintiffs contend that the requirement that they include coverage for certain contraceptive services (emergency contraceptive pills and intrauterine devices) in the insurance plans “substantially burdens” both the corporation’s and the owners’ religious rights. During the arguments, several of the justices discussed the extent to which the corporations did or not did not have a choice in offering coverage to their workers. In this brief, we explore some of the factors influencing coverage decisions and possible consequences for women and employers given possible Supreme Court decision options: either upholding the contraceptive coverage requirement, or in favor of Hobby Lobby.
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