New challenges to the Affordable Care Act

Signed in 2010, the Affordable Care Act has again been challenged on legal grounds. Kaiser Health News discussed elements of the challenge. The latest ruling from a federal judge is that one task force lacks appropriate authority to determine which services can be required to be covered by insurance companies at no cost to the patient. Perhaps more interestingly, the judge also ruled that forcing self-insured employers to fund certain services that are against the company's owners' religious beliefs violates federal law.

The federal judge who ruled on this recent case has previously ruled against the Affordable Care Act and was subsequently overturned. The judicial landscape might have sufficiently changed in the intervening years that a different outcome is possible, but we likely will not know for years, as it might take that long for the case to be resolved through the appeals process.