Kansas Health Institute | Information For Policy Makers. Health for Kansans.

The Supreme Court today announced that it will hear the legal challenge to the health reform law brought by Florida and 25 other states, including Kansas.

Oral arguments are expected to be heard by March and a decision could come by June, right in the middle of the 2012 presidential campaign.

The Florida lawsuit — which was joined by Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt — is the largest and broadest among more than two dozen lawsuits seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

Schmidt praised the court's decision to consider a range of issues presented by the reform law.

"I am encouraged that the court has agreed to hear not only the issues surrounding the constitutionality of the so-called 'individual mandate,' but also whether Congress exceeded its constitutional authority by threatening to withhold a state’s entire Medicaid allotment unless the state shapes its Medicaid program exactly as Congress commands," Schmidt said.

"These are issues that go to the heart of our federal system and its structured protection of liberty, and it is appropriate for the Supreme Court to resolve them."

The Florida case is the only in which an appeals court struck down the so-called "individual mandate."

The mandate would require virtually all Americans who can afford health insurance to have it or pay tax penalties. It's scheduled to become effective Jan. 1, 2014, along with several other major provisions of the reform law.

The appeals court, however, did not strike down the entire law, as did U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson. Today the Supreme Court signaled that it would consider the mandate in conjunction with other elements of the law — namely the provision that forces insurers to take all applicants, even those with pre-existing conditions.

The individual mandate is the provision that has sparked the most vocal opposition to the health reform law, including from some key Republicans in the Kansas Legislature and from Governor Sam Brownback.

Earlier this year, Gov. Brownback rejected a $31.5 million federal grant awarded to the Kansas Insurance Department to help fund the development of an online insurance purchasing exchange. Brownback said he ended the grant and ordered the return of the approximately $470,000 that had been spent to protect “the freedom of Kansans to make their own healthcare decisions.”

View predictions about the case made during an event at the Dole Center in Lawrence. Catherine Stetson, director of the Apellate practice at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., and Gregory Katsas, partner of D.C. law firm Jones Day and former assistant AG for the Civil Division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice, debated the constitutionality of the new Federal health care law's health insurance "mandate."