Are you up to date on healthcare reform?

The Court has a lot on its plate, as it will explore three primary issues related to the healthcare reform law:

• The so-called “individual mandate,” which requires most citizens and legal residents to maintain health insurance or pay a financial penalty, beginning in 2014. (Those who fail to meet certain minimum income levels will qualify for federal subsidies.) The federal government maintains it has the authority to require U.S. citizens to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty, under the Constitution’s “commerce clause.” But challengers (which, in the Supreme Court case, is a consortium of 26 states) argue that the government lacks the constitutional authority to require citizens to buy a product from a private entity. If the Court rules that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, it will then determine whether the rest of the ACA must be overturned, or whether it can stand without the mandate.

• The expansion of the Medicaid program to all citizens and certain legal residents with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty level. The Court has been asked to decide whether the law’s Medicaid expansion is constitutional, and whether the federal government has the right to cut off state funding for non-compliance.

• The potential application of the Anti-Injunction Act, a federal statute dating from 1867, which generally provides that statutes that impose penalties may be challenged in litigation only when the penalties are actually imposed. At least one federal appeals court relied on this Act in declining to rule on the constitutionality of the individual mandate at this time. Should the Court conclude that the Anti-Injunction Act applies, any claims involving the constitutionality of the mandate could be delayed until 2015, when the first penalties are scheduled to kick in.