After 11-Year Battle Over ACA, Is Health Law Here To Stay?

Politico: Obamacare Now Appears Safe. The Battle Over Its Future Continues. 
For once, Democrats and Republicans are offering the same message on Obamacare: The landmark health care law is here to stay. But so are the partisan battles over the law’s future, even after the final shreds of the GOP’s decade-long effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act appeared to be demolished by the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision Thursday affirming the law for the third time. (Luthi, 6/17)

The New York Times: Obamacare Is Here To Stay. Brace For New Health Care Battles
The waning repeal effort has given Democrats their first chance in a decade to press forward on a new campaign: moving the country toward a system of universal health coverage. It seems the end of a period when Democrats played constant defense, fighting back against legislative and legal challenges. Their recent expansion of health insurance subsidies had widespread support in the party. The stimulus package that Democrats passed in January spent $34 billion to make coverage more affordable for nearly all Americans who purchase their own health plans. That change, however, was temporary and is currently set to expire at the end of 2022. (Sanger-Katz and Kliff, 6/17)

The Atlantic: The Next Major Challenge To The Affordable Care Act
The Supreme Court’s rejection of the latest effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act does not mark the end of lawsuits over the law’s constitutionality. The next big case has already been filed, and it involves a clash between an obscure constitutional provision and the law’s guarantee of zero-dollar coverage for preventive services. The stakes will be lower this time around—the whole law isn’t threatened. But they’re significant nonetheless. If the plaintiffs win, insurers could force their customers to pay out of pocket for contraception, breastfeeding equipment and support, and drugs to prevent HIV infection. They could even start charging people for COVID-19 vaccines, including any boosters. This time, the law’s opponents stand a good chance of succeeding. (Bagley, 6/17)

NBC News: What Now? Congress Eyes New Era Of Health Policy After Obamacare Survives
Lawmakers in Congress wrestled with what the new era of federal health care policy would look like after the Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the latest existential challenge to Obamacare. Democrats said the next step was to build on the sprawling 2010 law, which touched on nearly all aspects of the health care system, by pushing policies to lower costs. (Kapur, 6/17)

AP: GOP Needs New Health Care Target; 'Obamacare' Survives Again
Along with the public’s gradual but decisive acceptance of the statute, the court rulings and legislative defeats underscore that the law, passed in 2010 despite overwhelming GOP opposition, is probably safe. And it spotlights a remarkable progression of the measure from a political liability that cost Democrats House control just months after enactment to a widely accepted bedrock of the medical system, delivering care to what the government says is more than 30 million people. “The Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land,” President Joe Biden said, using the statute’s more formal name, after the court ruled that Texas and other GOP-led states had no right to bring their lawsuit to federal court. (Fram, 6/18)

Axios: Supreme Court’s ACA Ruling Saves Republicans From Themselves 
The Supreme Court saved the health care system from imploding Thursday by dismissing a Republican challenge to the Affordable Care Act. But it also saved the GOP itself from another round of intraparty chaos. Most GOP lawmakers privately admit (and some will even say publicly) they don't want to deal with health care again. The issue generally isn't a good one for them with voters — as they learned the hard way after they failed to repeal the ACA in 2017. (Treene, Owens and Mucha, 6/17)

The Washington Post: As High Court Upholds Obamacare, Both Sides Rush To Recalibrate 
The decision by a conservative Supreme Court to uphold the Affordable Care Act could usher in an end of a bitter, 11-year drive to get rid of the law, as both parties immediately began scrambling to recalibrate their strategies with a sense that the political reality of health care was immutably altered. Some Republicans conceded Thursday that, after a decade of repeal votes, political campaigns and legal challenges, their quest to nullify the entire law probably is dead. Confronted with a 7-2 ruling that marked the third time the high court has preserved the law, some GOP members of Congress suggested that they would, instead, start plotting legislatively to trim back parts of it. (Goldstein, Viser and DeBonis, 6/17)

Also —

The Wall Street Journal: Why Is ACA Still Controversial 11 Years After Healthcare Law Known As Obamacare Was Passed? 
Republicans have argued that the law’s government-backed coverage expansion is too costly. Indeed, some Republican-led states, including Texas and Florida, have declined to expand their Medicaid programs under the ACA. They have also opposed some of the ACA’s prescriptive rules, saying that consumers should have more freedom to choose the types of plans they want, even if those are limited or don’t cover certain things. Some also objected to provisions of the law that deal with reproductive issues, including a mandate that employer plans generally cover contraception. (Mathews, 6/17)

The Wall Street Journal: The Affordable Care Act: A Brief History 
Since its passage in 2010, the Affordable Care Act has grown to provide health coverage to more than 31 million people when its Medicaid expansion is included, and survived three challenges before the Supreme Court. Here’s a look at notable changes the law has seen over the years. (Armour, 6/17)

Modern Healthcare: Supreme Court ACA Ruling Could Hasten Biosimilar Development
The Supreme Court voting to uphold the Affordable Care Act on Thursday was greeted with applause from payers and providers—and the biosimilar drug development industry. While opponents of the ACA large criticized the law's expansion of insurance and mandates around coverage, undoing the law would have unraveled the federal framework for reviewing and approving biosimilars, and litigation guidelines that backbone the industry, said Meghan Rose Smith, executive director of the Biosimilars Forum, a trade group that applauded the Supreme Court's decision. In the U.S., biosimilars offer a lower-cost alternative to some 30 name-brand biologics on the market today. (Tepper, 6/17)