This Supreme Court case could cause a massive change to the Affordable Care Act, impacting roughly 6.4M Americans. The case is around the Federal health insurance subsidies given to Americans to help them pay for health insurance on the exchange. The impacted group of Americans would lose $1.7B a month in subsidies, resulting in anyone with a subsidy having to pay in full for health insurance. This ruling may eliminate the mechanism to subsidize health insurance premium costs.
While premiums have been set for this year already, the impacted Americans would have to pay the remaining full cost of their medical premiums. This cost is subject to vary depending on when the ruling could take effect. The Kaiser Foundation has estimated this will cost an increase of 287% to the member’s cost in premium without the subsidy. Therefore, depending on financial status, this may be a significant impact to Americans with health insurance subsidies. If you are among the 6.4M Americans, it might be a good idea to follow the case closely. If the ruling confirms the subsidy is unethical, the impact could be brutal.
The point to the case is Americans can only receive a subsidy, if there state offers an exchange i.e. health insurance marketplace. For the states that did not create a health insurance marketplace, these Americans do not have an option to receive a subsidy to reduce health insurance costs. Therefore, the option is unbalanced.