Healthcare insurers retreat after Supreme Court upholds healthcare law

The Supreme Court found that the vast majority of the healthcare reform law, including its insurance mandate, is constitutional. In a 5-4 decision, the court held that Congress' taxing power under the Constitution gave it the authority to impose the mandate. The five justices who voted to uphold the law say that the law's penalty for not buying healthcare insurance is a tax. The court's majority ruled that the law's expansion of Medicaid is constitutional, but added that states who choose not to meet the law's Medicaid requirements may not be deprived of all of their Medicaid funding, according to SCOTUSblog. Instead, such states can only be deprived of new Medicaid funding, the blog quotes the court's majority as saying. Most large insurance companies fell following the court's decision. The law contains provisions that limit the profits of the insurers while placing costly mandates on them. On the other hand, hospital stocks are climbing, as the mandate is expected to help hospitals obtain more payments from poor patients.