Officials in the state have breathed a sigh of relief from the Supreme Court’s ruling.
California has always been among the states that most strongly supported the health care reforms made by President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, since it was first adopted in 2010.
Now that the top court has upheld the overhaul, the state is ready to continue on with its plans to comply.
According to officials in the state from both the medical and insurance industries, the law has put California in the perfect position to include an additional 6 million residents among those who can be considered adequately insured. Though there remains some struggle in the state to make sure that there will be enough doctors for all of these newly insured individuals, they have said that they feel certain that these details will be resolved with the billions of dollars of federal funds that the state has received.
According to California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, “The passage of the Affordable Care Act is one of the most significant legislative achievements of the last 40 years.” According to Jones, if the Court had decided to overturn the law, it would have eliminated the provisions of the health care reforms that the state had already enacted, including those that have removed the lifetime caps on coverage, and the ability for children to remain covered by their parents’ plans until the age of 26 years (which is currently benefiting approximately 350,000 young people in the state).
The removal of coverage limitations by the health care reforms benefits 12 million insured Californians.
According to Commissioner Jones, this has already saved the lives of many people as they can continue to afford to seek treatments for conditions that could otherwise be potentially fatal. He stated that “I can’t tell you how many Californians I have met who are alive today because of the elimination of the lifetime caps.”
According to Diana S. Dooley, the Health and Human Services Secretary, Thursday, the day of the announcement of the ruling, was “a very great day”. She added that though there have been a number of “starts and stops” since they began the implementation of the health care reforms, the state is now “in the full go mode.”
