Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)
One of the most significant recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions was the Court's validation of the PPACA's individual mandate, requiring virtually all Americans (with some exceptions) to purchase health insurance. The individual mandate was a critical component of the ability of the Act to function as it was designed by legislators. It was essential that people who were relatively healthy and young were insured to expand the risk pool of the insured given that preexisting conditions were no longer allowed to be grounds for denying people health insurance. This ensured that people would not simply wait until they were sick to seek out insurance. However, it is worth noting that there were numerous exceptions to this provision, including "undocumented immigrants, religious objectors, and people who are incarcerated" and those for whom paying the penalty for being non-insured would cause a financial hardship (Musumeci 2012: 2). The Act also expanded Medicaid, the state-run, federally-subsidized healthcare program for those living in poverty. The "ACA expands the Medicaid program's mandatory coverage groups by requiring that participating states cover nearly all people under age 65 with household incomes at or below 133% FPL ($14,856 per year for an individual and $30,657 per year for a family of four in 2012)" (Musumeci 2012: 3).
While the individual mandate and the Medicaid...
. . To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to say the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States" (Musumeci 2012: 4). It was noted that this was something of a surprise, given that the federal government, in its support of the ACA, did not claim that the penalty levied for being uninsured was a tax. However, the Court decided that the individual mandate effectively functioned as such, given that the amount of the fine was less than the price of insurance and could not be more, based upon the Act's provisions (Musumeci 2012: 4). The dissenting minority viewed the individual mandate instead as a shared responsibility payment, which it stated was indeed unconstitutional. However, the penalty was imposed solely by the IRS and collected like a tax even though its purpose was not to raise revenue and was labeled a "penalty" by the federal government (Cole 2012).
It should be noted that before the decision was handed down, an online statement by…
Healthcare in U.S. / Constitutionality of PPACA Meaning of Quote Constitutionality of the individual mandate PPACA Meaning of Quote The meaning of the quote "deviance is in the eye of the beholder" is that whatever is deviant to one may not be to another. The differences in cultures, environments and traditions in the world mean that whatever one society may view as deviant may be the convention or the norm in another. Similarly, at
History Of Health Care Mandate The signing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by President Obama must be considered a landmark event in the history of the nation regardless of how one views the constitutionality of the legislation. Passage of the legislation marked the end of a long and acrimonious debate and brought the United States in line with the rest of the developed world in terms of providing universal health
Health insurance coverage is one of the major issues at the core of initiatives to reform the United States health sector. This issue has attracted considerable attention in health reform initiatives because of the relatively high number of uninsured and underinsured people in the country. The United States has a high number of uninsured and underinsured populations despite the increased federal expenditures on health. Recent healthcare reform legislation has sought
In Woodson v. North Carolina, the Court held that an offense may not carry a mandatory capital punishment sentence, concluding that it violated both the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments because it precluded consideration of factors such as the defendant's character and life experiences in coming to a punishment decision (Larson 2003). This decision was affirmed in Roberts v. Louisiana when the Court held that even where a state narrowly defines
Stand your ground: Constitutionality 'Stand your ground' is not a new doctrine, according to the laws of the land. Its strongest support can be found in the case of Beard v. United States (1895). In the case of Beard, the court found that a "man assailed on his own grounds, without provocation, by a person armed with a deadly weapon and apparently seeking his life is not obliged to retreat,
Employee Privacy � Drug Testing vs. Mandatory VaccinationsMandatory vaccinations and various drug-testing regimens have long been used in the American workplace as a condition of employment in an effort to protect organizations as well as individual employees. Many Americans, however, are adamantly opposed to Covid-19 vaccine mandates, some to the point of resigning or even becoming violent in response to them despite having been already vaccinated for a laundry list
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now