Obama health care law survives second Supreme Court fight

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court sent a clear message Thursday that President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is here to stay, rejecting a major challenge that would have imperiled the landmark law and health insurance for millions of Americans.

The 6-3 ruling, which upheld financial aid to millions of low- and middle-income Americans to help pay for insurance premiums regardless of where they live, was the second major victory in three years for Obama in politically charged Supreme Court tests of the law.

Declining to concede, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said Republicans, who have voted more than 50 times to undo the law, will "continue our efforts to repeal the law and replace it with patient-centered solutions that meet the needs of seniors, small business owners, and middle-class families."

Other legal challenges are working their way through the courts, but they appear to pose lesser threats to the law, which passed Congress without a single Republican vote in 2010 and has now withstood two stern challenges at the Supreme Court.

Roberts said that to read the law the way challengers wanted — limiting tax credits to people who live in states that set up their own health insurance marketplaces — would lead to a "calamitous result" that Congress could not have intended.

The health insurance industry breathed a sigh of relief, and a national organization representing state regulators from both political parties said the court's decision will mean stable markets for consumers.

The idea was to decrease the number of uninsured, preventing insurers from denying coverage because of "pre-existing" health conditions, requiring almost everyone to be insured and providing financial help to those who otherwise would spend too much of their paychecks on premiums.

The 2012 case took place in the midst of Obama's re-election campaign, when the president was touting the largest expansion of the social safety net since the advent of Medicare nearly a half-century earlier.