Universal Health Insurance Coverage -- Really?

"Universal" vs. "Coverage"

Yesterday, CNN’s Tim Langmaid reported that Health and Human Services estimates that the percent of insured young people aged 19 to 25 rose from 64 percent to 73 percent. Based on census figures, that percentage change represents about 2.5 million young people. The increase is attributed by some to a provision of the health care reform legislation signed into law last year that allows young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance plans through age 26.

Today, however, Sara Rosenbaum writes in The New England Journal of Medicine about the Douglas cases for which the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in October. These consolidated cases are comprised of suits against California Medicaid for cutting reimbursement rates to the degree that, plaintiffs argued, beneficiaries’ access to care was seriously threatened.

The question before the Supreme Court is all about legal standing in the shadowy ground between federal legislative authority and the role of the states. Does the U.S. Constitution give private individuals the right to go to court to halt state actions that violate federal law and threaten immediate and irreparable harm? This will be a key issue in the years ahead as the federal government and the states get set to squabble over who gets the last legislative word in the realm of public health and safety.