Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Anxiety For Republicans, Not Just Democrats, As Supreme Court Considers Health Law
The Associated Press: Anxiety Over Supreme Court's Latest Dive Into Health Care
Nearly five years after President Barack Obama signed his health care overhaul into law, its fate is yet again in the hands of the Supreme Court. This time it's not just the White House and Democrats who have reason to be anxious. Republican lawmakers and governors won't escape the political fallout if the court invalidates insurance subsidies worth billions of dollars to people in more than 30 states. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 2/4)
USA Today: With Obamacare On The Line, Supreme Court Gets Literal
The fate of President Obama's health care law depends once again on how the Supreme Court interprets what Congress wrote — a task the justices have applied literally of late to laws affecting air, land and sea. Four words in the 906-page statute will be the focus of the high court's attention March 4, when opponents argue that tax credits received by millions of Americans are legal only in health insurance markets "established by the State." A literal reading of that phrase would seem to exclude health care exchanges operated by the federal government in 34 states. "It's a rather difficult textual argument for the government," said Kannon Shanmugam, who has argued 16 cases at the high court. (Jackson, 2/3)
