My personal opinion is this; government mandates such as the ACA can be argued against due to the arbitrary nature of what benefits my family; i.e. my employer must cover my children until they are 26 years old.
Here is some language from the US Dept of Labor website:
"Q1:How does the Affordable Care Act help young adults?
Before the Affordable Care Act, many health plans and issuers could remove adult children from their parents' coverage because of their age, whether or not they were a student or where they lived. The Affordable Care Act requires plans and issuers that offer dependent child coverage to make the coverage available until the adult child reaches the age of 26. Many parents and their children who worried about losing health coverage after they graduated from college no longer have to worry."
SO, worry drives this portion of the bill. Worry for our children's well-being. Is worry Constitutional? I suppose they could have made the age 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 etc. I don't know why they settled on 26. I get that it appears to be a bit old. It forces our employers to incur some sort of expense. But I don't think the law governs premiums. I work for a Fortune 500 company and I believe they subsidize approximately 80% of the cost of our premiums. It's a great plan. And there is a quid pro quo. I work very hard. I'm the Manager of Financial Planning for a large division and a "go-to" experienced employee who mentors many young employees and supports several other departments across the board. They have my total commitment. So my total compensation package is fair in my opinion when you consider my commitment. I have no doubt they would try to drop the age of dependent coverage in the absence of the ACA but in a world of employee acquisition and retention, it's all part of the package for talent.
In the end, I don't know if it hurts America to force our business community to cover these dependents. But it sure helps the families who are willing to pay the price of the job and the premium they levy. Is that Constitutional? I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe it should be a states rights issue.
But my main concern is the outright repeal due to this ruling and a lurch into the wilderness under a government that can't agree on anything.
Here are some interesting comments from the internets:
Trump hails judge's ruling against Obamacare as 'great'
"Timothy Jost, a health law expert and emeritus professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Virginia, said it was “silly” and “irresponsible” for O’Connor to find that the individual mandate could not be separated from the rest of the ACA. He said judges who find that portions of laws are invalid are required “to do as little damage as possible” to the rest of the law, and O’Connor had ignored that principle.
Jost noted that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear any appeal in the case, is considered the most conservative federal appeals court in the country. But, “O’Connor is so far off the reservation here that virtually any (appeals) panel will reverse him,” Jost said.
Jost noted that in the 2012 case in which the Supreme Court upheld the ACA, a lower appeals court had found the individual mandate unlawful, but ruled it could be severed from the rest of the law. That ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “is at least as persuasive and probably more persuasive than a decision by a single judge in Wichita Falls, Texas,” Jost said.
He said the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative wing has been skeptical in the past of striking down entire laws because of a single problematic provision, and at least a bare majority of five justices would likely agree that O’Connor was wrong."
Last edited: Dec 15, 2018