Community & Public Health
Healthcare Systems & Policy

The New Supreme Court: The End of Obamacare?

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Even as COVID-19 sweeps through the White House and waylays members of the Republican Judiciary Committee, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t paused his headlong rush to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett before Nov. 3. U.S. health policy hangs in the balance. The court is slated to hear the latest legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act a week after the election. If a new conservative majority invalidates the ACA, more than 20 million Americans could instantly lose their health insurance. Up to 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions could lose coverage or be forced to pay much higher premiums. And 12 million low-income Americans could be kicked off the Medicaid rolls. Those under the age of 26 would be on their own, unable to piggyback on parents’ plans, and insurers could reinstate lifetime caps for costly treatments. Top health policy experts have said a ruling against the ACA would “throw healthcare markets, and one-fifth of the economy, into chaos.” In this webinar, we’ll hear from one of the country’s leading health law experts and a top health care editor on what the remaking of the Supreme Court could mean for the future of health reform, and how you can clarify the stakes and tell powerful stories for your audiences.

This webinar is free and made possible by The Commonwealth Fund and the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation.

Panelists

Nicholas Bagley is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of health law, administrative law, and regulatory theory. Bagley’s work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Journal on Health Politics, Policy and Law. He is a frequent contributor to The Incidental Economist, a prominent health policy blog. Before joining the law school in 2010, he was an attorney with the Appellate Staff in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. Bagley served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Prior to earning his law degree at New York University Law School, he joined Teach For America and taught eighth-grade English at a public school in the South Bronx. 

Joanne Kenen is executive health care editor at Politico, where she has worked since 2011. A Harvard graduate, Kenen has covered health policy and politics in Washington for more than 20 years. As a Kaiser Family Foundation media fellow in 2006-07, she wrote about end of life issues and palliative care. She has reported from Central America on an Inter American Press Association fellowship, and worked for Reuters in New York, Florida and the Caribbean and Washington. She also wrote about health policy for several years at the nonpartisan New America Foundation. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic, Kaiser Health News, the Washingtonian, CQ, The Washington Post, the Center for Public Integrity, Health Affairs, AARP’s The Magazine and Bulletin, National Journal, Slate and Miller-McCune.

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