'Obamacare' may be struck down, revoking health care coverage for young adults

Wil Brawley is one of millions of young adults who rely on his parents’ to provide him with health insurance.

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law on March 23, 2010 by President Barack Obama, gave young adults the ability to stay on their parents’ health insurance plan until age 26.

Brawley, a junior at Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo., said he is depending on being able to stay on his parents’ plan after he graduates in May 2013 and is in support of the Affordable Care Act because of this provision.

“I am in support of (Affordable Care Act) because it is not commonplace for college students that have freshly graduated to have a career opportunity lined up for them that will give them the opportunity to have adequate health insurance,” he said. “College graduates are more and more having to take jobs they are overqualified for at first and the Affordable Care Act gives them some flexibility, breathing room and an earnest chance at landing on their feet.”

Because of this provision, the act was especially important for all young adults, said Aaron Smith, co-founder and executive director of Young Invincibles, an organization that represents the interests of 18 to 34 year-olds in health care reform.

“2.5 million people have gained insurance coverage by staying on their parents’ plans until they’re 26,” he said, a number issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in a press release March 21.

However, yesterday the Supreme Court held arguments about the constitutionality of provisions in the Affordable Care Act and young adults’ ability to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans could be in jeopardy.

“There’s a chance that the court could say that all of these (provisions) are connected and then if they were to knock down the whole law, young people who are graduating this spring would not be able to stay on their parents’ plans till they're 26 anymore because that part of the law would go down with the rest of it,” Smith said.

Greg Magarian, professor of law at Washington University Law School in St. Louis, Mo., said the issue the provisions depend on is severability -- or whether provisions in the act can be separated from the individual mandate provision which requires all Americans to purchase health insurance by 2014.

If the individual mandate is ruled unconstitutional, the provisions could be too because -- in Magarian’s opinion -- they cannot be separated from the individual mandate.

“The reason the court would probably find that it had to strike down other pieces of the law is that this law was a big legislative bargain and the individual mandate was the price for getting the insurance companies basically on board with the other provisions of the law with dealing with not turning away people for preexisting conditions, not denying coverage based on other considerations, and also critically, allowing students and other young people to remain on their parents’ health care plans longer,” he said.

Even though no one is questioning the constitutionality of allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans, “it could get knocked off if the individual mandate got knocked off because the court might see that as part of the political deal that is now being undone,” Magarian said.

However, Magarian said he thinks the individual mandate will not be ruled unconstitutional because of the power granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution.

The Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce and the federal governments’ power to regulate has expanded enormously since the Constitution went into effect, Magarian said.

“Overtime the understanding of the Commerce Clause that the Supreme Court has developed is that Congress may use its authority under that clause to regulate any matter that substantially affects interstate commerce,” he said. “It means that just about any area of human endeavor that is of concern to a wide range of people is going to fit within that somehow.”

Because of this broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause and because the government has required Americans to purchase forms of insurance before, Magarian said he believes the act will stand as it is.

“States require you to buy auto insurance,” he said. “Now you can opt out of that requirement by not getting a driver’s license, but most people want to -- and many people effectively need to -- have a driver’s license in order to live and work.

“So we know already that the state may in fact -- the government in a broad sense -- may require you to buy some commodity from the private market, and in fact a commodity very similar to health insurance.”

However, Brawley said he is not confident that provisions in the act will be ruled constitutional because the government may not have the power to force people to buy health insurance.

“I think they will rule it unconstitutional,” he said. “I have a hard time pinning down why exactly that is but it just seems to cross the barriers of what is allowed to be forced onto the public.”

The Supreme Court will have 90 minutes of questions today on severability of provisions in the Affordable Care Act from the individual mandate and one hour of questions on Medicaid expansion. The court is expected to reach a verdict in June.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declined interview requests for this article.

Megan Gates is a Spring 2012 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about her here.

This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.