The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the legislative branch agency responsible for estimating the cost of legislation, issued two reports on July 24th related to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The first report, revised cost and health insurance coverage estimates for the ACA in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius^[1]. In that ruling, the Court concluded the individual requirement to purchase health insurance coverage, while not a reasonable exercise of congressional Commerce Clause authority, is constitutional as a tax under congressional Spending Clause authority. The Court also held that the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, requiring states to cover all non-elderly individuals with incomes below 133^[2] percent of the federal poverty level was unconstitutional. However, rather than striking the requirement, the Court precluded the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from enforcing the mandate by withholding all Medicaid funds. As a result of the ruling, states now have the option of expanding coverage to 133 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), and will receive enhanced federal matching funds as provided under the law, but are not required to expand coverage.^[3]

The Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited ruling in the case of National Federation of Independent Businesses et al. v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al., upholding the individual requirement to maintain insurance coverage as a reasonable exercise of Congress’s taxing and spending authority and also upholding the constitutionality of the Medicaid coverage expansion. In a surprise coalition, Chief Justice Roberts was joined in his majority opinion by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. The summary below describes the majority opinion, the concurring opinion (authored by Justice Ginsburg), and the dissenting opinion (written by Justice Scalia). Because the Court upheld the individual mandate, it never reached...