Health Law

WASHINGTON - Here's a thought that can't comfort President Obama: The fate of his health-care overhaul rests with five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices. If they stand together, his most sweeping domestic achievement could be struck down. But the good news for Obama is that he probably needs only one of the five to side with him to win approval of the law's crucial centerpiece, the requirement that almost everyone in this country has insurance or pays a penalty.

In a precedent setting decision that likely will reverberate through election day and beyond, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision Thursday upheld President Obama's health care overhaul including a requirement that all non-exempt Americans buy health insurance. The court said the law's requirement that individual Americans purchase insurance or be subject to a penalty levied by the IRS was constitutional. It also upheld a provision greatly expanding Medicaid, the health care program for the poor jointly financed by the state and federal governments.

About 6.6 million adults under age 26 joined their parents' insurance plans in 2011 because of the U.S. health-care law, the largest one-year increase in medical coverage for the age group, a survey found. The part of the law that lets young people stay on parental plans until 26 helped boost coverage during tough economic times, said Sara Collins, vice president for affordable health insurance at the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based nonprofit that conducted the survey and supports expanded health coverage.

It's Independence Day, so many Americans are reflecting on the year 1776, when this nation was born. But today's rancorous political divisions are also a reminder of 1861, when President Lincoln explained in a Fourth of July speech why war was necessary to crush that period's "states' rights" movement. More than 150 years later, another crew of states'-righters are challenging a president. They're not threatening to secede, but are vowing to ignore a law passed by Congress and recently deemed constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court — the Affordable Care Act, which they have derisively dubbed Obamacare.

Health insurers will gain $1 trillion in new revenue over the next eight years under the 2010 health-care law, assuming it is upheld by the Supreme Court, according to a Bloomberg Government study. The amount is equal to about one-half percent of the nation's estimated gross domestic product from 2013 to 2020. Insurers would keep about $174 billion - $22 billion a year - for profit and administrative costs. The money comes from U.S. subsidies to people purchasing insurance beginning in 2014 and an expansion of Medicaid, the government's health program for the poor.

Tsarnaev left note in boat NEW YORK - Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left a "deathbed" note inside the hull of the boat where he was captured, claiming he and his older brother set off bombs at the Boston Marathon as retribution for U.S. attacks on Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, a law enforcement source said Thursday. The note said the victims of the April 15 attack were essentially collateral damage, the source said. He referred to his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died in a shootout with police, as a martyr whom he wouldn't miss because he would join him in the afterlife, the source said.

The Obama administration should cancel plans for $8.4 billion in "quality" bonuses to insurance companies that provide Medicare coverage because Congress didn't authorize the spending and it's unlikely to improve care for the elderly, government auditors said. The bonuses for Medicare Advantage plans run by companies including UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Humana Inc. would pay about $5 billion more through 2014 than what Congress authorized in the U.S. health-care system overhaul, the Government Accountability Office said in a report today.

WASHINGTON - Here is how Philadelphia-area House members voted on major issues last week (Senate in recess): House Repeal of contractors' law. Voting 405-16, the House on Thursday sent the Senate a bill (HR 674) to repeal a law affecting some companies that receive government contracts on the federal, state, and local levels. Scheduled to take effect in 2013, the law is seen by critics as a paperwork burden that will slow job creation, while defenders say it will crack down on tax cheats and boost IRS collections.

The biggest changes in health insurance in a generation are set to take effect this year and next. Robert I. Field, a law and public health professor at Drexel University, answers questions about the changes stemming from the health law. Insurance exchanges are coming. What are they? An exchange is a marketplace where you can buy health insurance for you and your family. Most people will access them online, but there will be offices for those who prefer human contact.

HARRISBURG - Gov. Corbett on Wednesday waded into the debate on the federal health-care law, urging the Obama administration to petition to have challenges of that law sent straight to the U.S. Supreme Court, bypassing lower appellate courts because of the urgency of the issue. "Pennsylvania and all states need clarity," Corbett said, appearing as star witness at a congressional hearing held in an unusual setting - the state Capitol, on the law's first anniversary. Rep. Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.)