This past Thursday, June 28th, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision on the challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. To briefly summarize, the Court found the individual mandate, which requires that virtually all Americans either obtain health insurance or pay a penalty by 2014, to be constitutional.
SCOTUSblog has extensive coverage of the decision, including a plain-English summary and a variety of articles in an online symposium devoted to the issue. The decision has also been reported on extensively by every major news outlet, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Law360 (accessible via BLS proxy server or on-campus).
For additional background information about the Act, consider checking out Law, Explanation and Analysis of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, available in the BLS Library. This publication provides comprehensive and practical guidance on every provision of the Act, including committee reports, the official text, and detailed analysis of each provision.
Below is a video of President Obama’s comments on the significance of the Court’s decision.
