Jan. 11 (UPI) — The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a legal challenge targeting the preventative care mandates of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in its upcoming term.
In an order issued Friday, the high court granted “certiorari” to Xavier Becerra vs. Braidwood Management Inc., meaning the case has been placed on the docket and is likely to get a hearing in March or April with a decision coming by the end of June.
The suit, which seeks to eliminate the current mandate to provide preventative healthcare insurance coverage under the ACA, has now reached the Supreme Court following a “mixed-bag” ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in June.
The conservative businesses bringing the case cite religious objections to being made to purchase health insurance that includes coverage for “abortifacient contraception,” PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) to prevent HIV transmission and screenings and behavioral counseling for sexually transmitted disease and drug use, stating they believe these interventions “encourage homosexual behavior, intravenous drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.”
They contend the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — a panel that determines what kinds of preventative coverage are mandatory under the ACA — is unconstitutional because its members are not elected or appointed by Congress and thus should be eliminated.
The Biden administration describes the USPSTF as a 16-member independent group of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine that works to improve the health of all Americans “by making evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services such as screenings, counseling services, or preventive medications.”
Its volunteer members come from the fields of preventive medicine and primary care, including internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, behavioral health, obstetrics/gynecology and nursing, and most are practicing clinicians.
The White House and the ACA’s backers argue that the elimination of the panel would wipe out preventative healthcare coverage now enjoyed by millions of Obamacare recipients.
In its June decision, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit upheld a lower court decision issued by a Texas federal judge finding that the USPSTF is unconstitutional. But they declined to issue any nationwide injunction of the preventative care mandate, thus keeping it in place for the time being while producing uncertainty about its legal future.
Both the plaintiffs and the Biden administration acted late last year to bring the case before the Supreme Court for clarification.
The law’s proponents are warning that letting the 5th Circuit’s decision stand would
invalidate “a critically important provision of the Affordable Care Act that ensures more than 150 million Americans’ access to essential life-saving tests and treatments.”
In an amici brief submitted in October by the American Public Health Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and other public health advocates, the law’s backers said that if the ruling is permitted to stand, “deadly diseases will not be detected and important treatments will be unavailable — resulting in serious illnesses, chronic medical conditions, and deaths that otherwise would have been prevented.”