The ACA: At Issue

The ACA: At Issue (SIDEBAR)

1. The Anti-Injunction Act: Does the individual insurance mandate fall under the tax code? If it does, the Supreme Court can't rule on its constitutionality until after it has "harmed" someone. Any litigation before that could potentially stop the IRS from collecting rightful taxes.
2. The Minimum Coverage Provision: Is it unconstitutional for the government to require nearly every American in the country to obtain health insurance by 2014? At issue is whether Congress had the authority through its power to tax or its power over interstate commerce to make such a requirement.
3. Severability: If the minimum coverage provision is found unconstitutional, does the rest of the Act have to fall with it? Do only the related provisions need to fall? The bill has more than 450 provisions on nearly 3,000 pages, many of which are not reliant on the minimum coverage provision.
4. The Expansion of Medicaid: Does Congress have the authority to tell states that they must expand Medicaid to the poor, or is the amount of money they are offering coercive? There is at least one report of a state saying it didn't want to expand Medicaid when the government asked it to, only to be told their whole program budget would be rescinded. However, Medicaid has been expanded multiple times over the years and Congress' power to do this has never been denied.