Supreme Court Upholds the Affordable Care Act, Again

The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Thursday, June 17, ruling 7-2 that a group of states and two individual plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge the law. The case, California v. Texas, is the third major challenge to the 2010 health care reform law that the Supreme Court has considered, each time upholding the law. The plaintiffs argued that when Congress repealed the law’s individual mandate penalty in 2017, it caused the rest of the ACA to become unconstitutional.

31 million Americans were accessing health coverage through the ACA at the beginning of 2021, including the Marketplaces for people who buy insurance on their own and the Medicaid expansion. Since then, more than 1.2 million people have newly enrolled in Marketplace plans through a COVID-19 special enrollment period that runs through August 15.  

The ACA’s essential health benefits (EHBs) have broadened access to occupational therapy services for people who do not get insurance on the job or from a government program like Medicare by guaranteeing coverage of rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices. AOTA has documented how OT is covered under the rehabilitation and habilitation EHB category in semiregular Analysis of Rehabilitation and Habilitation in Qualified Health Plans reports and worked to show that OT is essential to a meaningful package of benefits and that services must be allowed that help to attain and maintain, not just regain, skills and functioning for daily living.

You can read the Supreme Court’s opinion in California v. Texas here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-840_6jfm.pdf.