THE RP’S BREAKING NEWS- Link to Supreme Court Decision — Upholds Individual Mandate

Shortly after 10 a.m. this morning, in a majority decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld the core of President Obama’s signature healthcare law, stating that while the individual mandate is not permissible under the commerce clause, it is under Congress’s taxing authority. However, the Court said that states can opt out of the law, as many have attempted in the past two years. [Washington Post]

UPDATE:  Click here for the link to the text of the Supreme Court decision.

UPDATE 2:  Courtesy of The Atlantic, SCOTUS blog, a one paragraph summary of the decision:

In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.