The U.S. Supreme Court will rule soon, perhaps as early as this week, on whether the Affordable Care Act illegally provides tax credits to Americans who have bought insurance on a federally run -- as opposed to a state-run -- website.
The four words "established by the state" have brought Obamacare back to the Supreme Court, three years after it upheld one of the law's central tenets: that American adults buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell contend that the tax credits that make Obamacare affordable to millions of Americans are illegal unless the policyholder acquired his policy at an online marketplace that was, as the statute says, "established by the state."
More than two-thirds of states, including Georgia, opted not to create their own websites but to use the federal one instead.
If the court disallows the tax credits, more than 400,000 people in Georgia alone stand to lose their new insurance policies.
The outcome is still anyone's guess: some on the court have indicated that the law is intended to extend tax credits regardless of where the customer buys the insurance; others have said the law seems to have a technical flaw that Congress can easily fix. The House, of course, has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act dozens of times.
For the full story and the impact on Georgia, go to MyAJC.com.
Also at MyAJC.com today: Republicans prepare for the ruling.
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