How Supreme Court’s Health Care Decision Will Impact MidSouth

(Memphis) The Supreme Court is ruling the federal government can require most people buy health insurance or face a penalty in the form of a tax.

But for doctors and insurance companies, it also changes the way they operate.

Charles Key is an attorney specializing in healthcare, and says the Supreme Court’s decision saves insurance companies a big headache.

“It will avoid the chaos that would have ensued had the court struck down the law entirely, because many of the provisions have already been implemented in the area of insurance reform,” said Key.

Those provisions, that have already been put into place, allow parents to keep their children on their insurance until they’re 26 and elimination of preexisting conditions and lifetime maximums for coverage.

Dr. Maioj Jain says the law will increase the number of patients he sees because more people will be covered, “It will create a lot more patients for the health care system to handle and that will be difficult.”

Dr. Jain says forty-six million Americans do not have health insurance and under the Affordable Care Act around 30 million of them will now be covered.

He says this will help doctors receive payments from people who are uninsured right now, “Right now you know about ten to fifteen percent of the patients I see day to day do not have health insurance. We just do not get paid on them. So there will be a larger percentage who we as providers and hospitals and as doctors will get paid for.”

The law requires companies with fifty or more employees to provide health insurance. Taylor Guy is not a fan of the Supreme Court’s decision and thinks it will cost jobs.

“I know a lot of people that only hire part time employees so they don’t have to work forty hours so they don’t have to give them health care,” said Guy.

Also under the plan most people who can afford health insurance but chose not to will be slapped with a tax.

Dwight Woods believes there was never any question over that provisions constitutionality.

“You got a choice either to buy it or not. I mean, but I still don’t think it was unconstitutional and obviously the Supreme Court didn’t think it, or they wouldn’t have up held his passage of that bill,” said Woods.

Kenneth Brown thinks he should be allowed to drop his health insurance whenever he wants without having to face a fine or tax, “You work too hard already to get whatever you can and your living from pay check to pay check and you don’t want to have to spend money to pay money for something if you want to drop it because you don’t need it anymore.”

Jo Ann Hunter believes everyone should have health insurance, “I do firmly believe that everyone should have it, but I do think it probably should be looked at in regards to what kind of costs we are going to incur.”

Over the next ten years the Affordable Cost Act will cost American tax payers almost a trillion dollars.

There are some exemptions from buying health insurance or facing a fine and those include: If the lowest cost plan option exceeds 8% of an individual’s income, individuals (and their dependents) whose household income is less than the filing threshold for federal income taxes for the applicable tax year, undocumented immigrants, financial hardships, incarcerated individuals, members of Indian tribes, religious objections or those in a health care sharing ministry.