Federal Court Rules Health Care Reform Provision Unconstitutional
Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia held that the individual health insurance mandate provision found in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the comprehensive health care reform legislation that President Barack Obama signed into law in March 2010, is unconstitutional. The individual mandate would require most individuals to obtain health insurance or pay a fine.
The court’s ruling doesn’t invalidate the PPACA as a whole since the court determined that the individual mandate provision and “directly dependent provisions” are severable from the rest of the PPACA. The court also didn’t invalidate the entire law because that particular provision won’t go into effect until 2014.
