On November 10th, there is a crazy important case that involves a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, or the ACA. The ACA is the healthcare law that some people call Obamacare. And what's being challenged specifically in this case is something called minimum essential coverage provision. And sometimes you heard it called the individual mandate. What this minimum essential coverage provision says is that if you don't have healthcare, then you have to pay a penalty. And it's being challenged because Congress set the penalty to $0 starting January 2019. And what that resulted in is a lot of states saying, well, that's unconstitutional because the penalty of $0 essentially means that provision of the law doesn't do anything. And doesn't generate, "At least some revenue." As a result, Texas, and a number of other states have filed suit to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act based on that one provision. And there's a really great breakdown of this on the internet, if you just type in California versus Texas, which is the name of the case.
What happened at the trial court was that this case was heard, it was appealed to the Fifth Circuit, the Fifth Circuit remanded it, but the Supreme Court jumped in and is taking the case up now. It'll be, probably, one of the first major cases besides election day cases that Amy Coney Barrett is going to have to rule in. And the courts, Republican five for majority on the Supreme Court right now, where Justice Roberts has been the swing vote many a time is now changing, obviously because there is a sixth for majority on the Supreme Court. And Democrats before only had to convince one justice to swing their way when it came to political leanings. Now, ostensibly, the fear is that Democrats have to sway at least two Republicans to get "their way." But if the ACA's overturned it could have massive and far reaching consequences for the entire healthcare system in the United States. And I don't think they're necessarily good consequences, but we'll see what happens on November 10th in oral argument and see what questions the justices ask, and what the reporters say is being telegraphed by this.
