A major challenge to the Affordable Care Act was dismissed Thursday in a 6-3 ruling.
The ruling means that the government can continue to provide subsidies—a critical aspect of a law intended to provide lower-income Americans with coverage, reports The New York Times.
The fight was rooted in an ambiguous phrase in the law, stating that subsidies would be available under "an exchange established by the state," referring to the marketplaces set up to allow healthcare providers to sell insurance plans.
Though the term "the state" was supposedly intended to refer to government in general, the challengers hoped the Supreme Court would interpret it as forbidding federal government to provide subsidies in indivudual states that do not have their own exchanges.
"In this instance," [Chief Justice Roberts] wrote, "the context and structure of the act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase."
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," he added. "If at all possible, we must interpret the act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter."
