Supreme Court approves Affordable Care Act

July 2, 2012

The Affordable Care Act was passed by the United States Supreme Court Thursday in a 5-4 decision, reports the Tucson Citizen.

The act requires almost everyone to obtain health care and guarantees it will be available to those previously uninsured or uninsurable.

The Affordable Care Act has rewritten the Social Security Act of 1935 and the amendment to the Social Security Act that created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Each of these acts added or altered social protections for large groups of Americans.

Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, said that this health-care law “will have implications for tens of millions, including 30 million who will get access to health insurance and many more millions that will be affected by insurance-regulation reforms.”

Though no one knows for sure how this historical move will impact the country, historians and legal scholars said if the past is a guide, the legislation will eventually become an accepted part of American society.

“The Supreme Court has signed off on a piece of legislation that is as sweeping and perhaps more sweeping than any social-welfare legislation in half a century and perhaps since the New Deal,” said Jacobs, the co-author of the 2010 book Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

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