Health Insurance, Supreme Court | featured news

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has denied a request to block part of the federal health care law that requires employee health-care plans to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency contraception pills.

Insurance companies hailed the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act, saying it gives them certainty about the rules they'll face as they push to cut administrative costs and reward doctors who contain health care costs by emphasizing preventive care.

Stocks of hospital companies rose sharply and insurance companies fell Thursday after the Supreme Court upheld a requirement that almost all Americans carry health insurance. The stock of Hospital Corp. of America, the largest private hospital chain in the United States, rose a little more than 7 percent. Quest Diagnostics, which runs laboratories, rose almost 3 percent.

Under the healthcare law, insurance companies would be required to cover the panel's recommended weight-loss treatments. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the law this week. In a move that could significantly expand insurance coverage of weight-loss treatments, a federal health advisory panel on Monday recommended that all obese adults receive intensive counseling in an effort to rein in a growing health crisis in America.

On the final day of the health care arguments, the Supreme Court justices considered a variety of possible approaches if the individual mandate is removed from the law.

President Barack Obama's health care law would not collapse if the Supreme Court strikes down the unpopular requirement that most Americans carry medical insurance or face a penalty....

The Supreme Court's conservative justices Tuesday laid into the requirement in the Obama administration's healthcare law that Americans have health insurance, as the court began a much-anticipated second day of arguments on the controversial legislation.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge to President Barack Obama's sweeping health care reform law, including the mandate that individuals buy insurance.

The Supreme Court refused Monday to bypass the lower courts and take up an immediate challenge to the constitutionality of the national healthcare reform law and its requirement that all those who can afford it have medical insurance by 2014.

A 2005 Supreme Court ruling citing the authority to regulate commerce poses a problem for suits claiming it's unconstitutional for the federal government to force individuals to have insurance.

Lawsuits from 14 states challenging the constitutionality of the new national healthcare law face an uphill battle, largely due to a far-reaching Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that upheld federal restrictions on home-grown marijuana in California.