WHITE HOUSE BRIEF SAYS PPACA CAN SURVIVE WITHOUT INDIVIDUAL MANDATE
In a brief filed on January 27, the Obama administration told the U.S. Supreme Court that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) could survive even if the individual mandate provision were declared unconstitutional. The mandate, set to take effect on January 1, 2014, would require most U.S. citizens to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty.

The White House continues to assert that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gave the government the authority to impose the individual mandate. However, the brief argues that most of PPACA is unrelated to the mandate, and would be unaffected by a Supreme Court decision to invalidate it. The brief states, “While the minimum-coverage provision unquestionably advances the Congressional goal of comprehensive health care reform in general and private health insurance reform in particular, the minimum-coverage provision operates independently of the vast majority of the Affordable Care Act.”

Opponents of the mandate, including the National Federation of Independent Business, claim that PPACA should be scrapped entirely because it would not have been enacted without the mandate. In response, the government has pointed out that many of PPACA’s other provisions will have been in effect for several years before the mandate takes effect.

The brief further argues that the individual mandate’s challengers cannot show that Congress did not intend for PPACA to take effect without it, and that, under general principles of judicial interpretation, striking down one portion of a law would not justify invalidating all of it. The government concedes that PPACA’s “guaranteed issue” provision, which would prevent insurers from denying coverage based on a person’s medical or family history, and “community rating” provision, which would prohibit insurers from charging higher premiums based on such factors, depend heavily on the individual mandate and would also have to be stricken if the mandate were found to be invalid.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments on the constitutionality and severability of the individual mandate, and other issues, at the end of March.

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