The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a case arguing a key Medicare panel is unconstitutional, putting an abrupt end to an effort to gut a controversial part of the healthcare law.
The Independent Payment Advisory Board was created in Obamacare to issue recommendations on Medicare cuts in case the program grows too fast. The case, Coons vs. Lew, centers on whether the process of recommending and installing cuts circumvents Congress.
Once the board makes recommendations, the Obama administration can put them into effect. Congress has only a few days to veto the cuts, which plaintiffs in the suit argue is not enough time.
The board was originally characterized by Obamacare opponents as a “death panel” that will decide whether seniors get Medicare coverage or not. However, that claim was quickly debunked as the panel doesn’t evaluate individual coverage, just overall cuts to the entire program if it grows too fast.
Originally the lawsuit also challenged the law’s individual mandate as unconstitutional, however the Supreme Court narrowly held up the mandate in 2012 in a separate lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed by the right-leaning think tank the Goldwater Institute. Since the Supreme Court will not hear the lawsuit, an earlier decision by a lower court in Arizona dismissing it will stand. That court found that the challenge was premature.
The decision is a blow to opponents of the healthcare law hoping to dismantle it through the courts. However, the Supreme Court is expected to rule this summer on a pivotal challenge to the law’s subsidies in King v. Burwell.
