Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the arguments regarding whether or not the Obama administration’s overhaul of the healthcare system is constitutional, but now that they’re over and the waiting process for the Court’s decision is under way, people have started to wonder what will happen if the law is overturned.
The problem is that the system that came before the overhaul still wasn’t getting the job done. Millions of Americans will remain uninsured, and either unable to afford coverage or unable to obtain it because they have pre-existing conditions. The cost of healthcare will continue to rise as it was doing before, and it will continue to be delivered inefficiently in a way that is not sustainable.
Despite this fact and the predictions that have been made regarding the increasing lack of affordability of health coverage between now and a future as near as 2016 – based on the pre-overhaul healthcare system – a significant amount of the time before the Supreme Court was concentrated on attempting to interpret the tone, gestures, and overall questions made by the Justices, in the hopes of determining which side would likely come out on top.
It should be noted that one of the driving forces of the increasing costs of healthcare in the United States is that a large number of families in the country are uninsured, but must still obtain medical treatment. It has been estimated that the amount that the insured pay in order to compensate for the care received by the uninsured is about $300 per individual, or $1,200 per family of four.
The health care reform made by the Obama administration would have remedied that pass-along by ensuring that everyone would be covered by some level of health insurance. The law shifted the majority of those additional costs to the government, instead of to the individuals and families themselves. Over time, the costs would be covered by non-payroll taxes – that is corporate and income taxes – that would be spread disproportionately among Americans in the higher income brackets.