Volume 385, Issue 9988, 4 July 2015
WORLD REPORT Officials expect to launch the US President’s new health project later this year. But Congress has yet to decide whether to fully fund it. The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, Susan Jaffe, reports.
ACA supporters celebrate outside the Supreme Court following the judgment on June 25 (Bloomberg)
Although critics still deride it as Obamacare, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court victory last week
enshrined the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as one of his greatest domestic accomplishments. The court might have also effectively disarmed the opposition, shifting the debate to next year’s campaign for the presidency as the next chance for critics to try to dismantle the law.
But for 6·4 million Americans who could have lost the health law’s insurance subsidies—the key issue before the court—the historic ruling has a different meaning. “Thank God, I can still get my medical care”, said Jacqueline Clay, a New Jersey woman receiving treatment for breast cancer who turned 61 years of age the day the court upheld the subsidies. “I am not going to die.” [Continued in full text or PDF ]