What Health Care Ruling Will Mean For You

What Health Care Ruling Will Mean For You, Within a week, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to strike down at least some part of the landmark law. Within a week, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to rule on the landmark 2010 health care law that President Obama – for better or worse – made the centerpiece of his initial time in office.

Conventional wisdom holds that the court will ‘vote’ mostly along party lines with a 50-50 chance of invalidating at least the part of the program that requires Americans to buy health insurance. But that means the high court is equally likely to uphold the law, much of which has not gone into effect yet.

What’s that to you?

The political consequences may be immediate and severe, but the personal ramifications will be less extreme. Nobody should expect to lose part or all of their coverage overnight, and health costs won’t immediately ratchet up or down in response.

“We’ve gotten assurances that insurers and employers won’t change anything mid-stream, and will hang on for a while,” said Jeff Munn, a benefits consultant with Fidelity Investments, who works with employers.

He suggests that the earliest consumers would see any impact from a decision would be at open-enrollment time, which usually comes in the fall.

But healthcare consumers – covered or not – should be ready for the decision, and for some of the longer-range implications. Here are a few steps you may have to take after the Supremes weigh in.

– Shop for your kids’ coverage. Already in effect is a provision that allows parents to keep their young adults covered by their family health insurance policies until they turn 26. Those 20-somethings won’t be dumped overboard, even if the high court throws the entire Affordable Care Act into the round file. Maybe that’s because that age cohort usually is profitable to insurers, but several major insurers have stepped up to say that they would keep that coverage anyway.

Less likely to last long term, in the face of a Supreme Court nullification, would be the provisions that eliminate pre-existing conditions as a reason to deny children coverage. Carrie McLean, an expert with private insurance broker ehealthinsurance.com, said she has heard several major carriers promise to keep that rule in place, at least for a while. But some carriers have also dropped child-only policies because of that provision. (Reuters)