For the third time, the Affordable Care Act has survived a challenge in the Supreme Court.
The court determined that the plaintiffs—Texas and 17 other Republican-led states—did not have legal standing in the case. The court did not rule on the substance of the case, which centered on whether Congress's 2017 removal of the financial penalty for not buying health insurance meant that the entire law was unconstitutional.
This is great news for the roughly 20 million people who would have lost health care coverage if the ACA had been struck down. The ACA, of course, also protects those with preexisting conditions, forbids copays for certain preventive care services, and prohibits lifetime caps on benefits, among other advances.
For a full explanation of the case, see this morning's coverage from Kaiser Health News.