Health Care Law Looms Over New Supreme Court Term

The Supreme Court is beginning a term expected to be dominated by health care with arguments Monday in a closely watched case involving the Medicaid program for poor Americans.
The first order of business is disposing of appeals in more than a thousand cases that piled up over the summer.

After that, the justices will hear arguments in a case that centers on California's plan to cut Medicaid payments to doctors, hospitals and other medical providers to close the state's budget gap.

The issue is whether the providers and Medicaid recipients can go to federal court to block the reductions from taking effect, claiming they violate the federal Medicaid law.

California, joined by the Obama administration, says only the U.S. Health and Human Services Department can make that call.

The high court began its new term Monday, and President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, which affects almost everyone in the country, is squarely in its sights.

The Obama administration's request last week that the justices resolve whether the health care law is constitutional makes it more likely than not that they will deliver their verdict by June 2012, just as Obama and his Republican opponent charge toward the fall campaign.

Already, GOP presidential contenders use virtually every debate and speech to assail Obama's major domestic accomplishment, which aims to extend health insurance to more than 30 million people now without coverage.

If as now expected the justices agree to review the law's constitutionality, those deliberations would certainly define the court's coming term. Their decision could rank as the court's most significant since the December 2000 ruling that effectively sealed George W. Bush's election as president.

Health care is only one of several issues that the court could hear that would make for a "fantastic Supreme Court term," said former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, now in private practice at the Hogan Lovells law firm.

Other high-profile cases on the horizon concern immigration and affirmative action, hot-button issues at any time and only more so in an election year.