The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments both for and against President Obama’s health care reform initiative, known as the Affordable Care Act. The provision at the center of the legal debate — the “individual mandate –” requires all adults to buy health insurance, either through their employers or by purchasing it themselves. With the Court not expected to release its ruling until June, Knowledge at Wharton talked with Wharton professors Scott Harrington, Jonathan Kolstad, Mark Pauly and Arnold Rosoff about the possible outcomes of the case; the potential implications for businesses and consumers, and ways in which health care delivery in this country can be improved.
Harrington has written extensively on the economics and regulation of insurance. Kolstad has studied the impact of health reforms, including the individual mandate implemented in Massachusetts in 2006. A recent NPR report referred to Pauly as the “intellectual father of the individual mandate.” In 1989, he was one of a group of academics who came up with the provision after being asked by President George H.W. Bush to provide a solution to the nation’s health care challenges. Rosoff sat in on two of the Supreme Court arguments on the Affordable Care Act — the March 27 discussion of the individual mandate and the March 28 discussion of the issue of severability, or whether the remainder of the law could stand if one or more provisions are declared unconstitutional.
Scott Harrington on the ACA and Beyond
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Jonathan Kolstad on Lessons from Massachusetts
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Mark Pauly on the Individual Mandate
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Arnold Rosoff on the Supreme Court Case
