One Year After SCOTUS, Health Law Is Even More Complex

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | July 1, 2013

It's been a year since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld most of Affordable Care Act, and by now the law’s critics and opponents can probably rest assured that the individual mandate set no precedent for the federal government to require American citizens to eat broccoli.

“It was Ruth Bader Ginsburg who I thought just demolished that argument when she said the choice to not have coverage has economic consequences to it that rifle through the rest of society,” said Alden Bianchi, a Boston-based healthcare attorney with the firm Mintz Levin.

“If I’m 22 years old and I feel like I don’t need health insurance and so I don’t get it, but then I get hit by a bus, I’ve got a quarter of a million dollars in medical expenses that’ve got to be spread around," Bianchi explained. "Somebody’s got to pay.”