One of the biggest political question marks going into 2012 is the fate of the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Audie Cornish speaks with Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times about what's ahead for Americans in terms of health care in the new year, including a constitutional challenge to the law's mandatory health care provision.



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The big issue before the court is the one that's been roiling courts around the country is the mandate, and whether or not Congress has the authority to require Americans to buy a product, in this case health insurance, is sort of at the top of the issues that the court will decide. And then two smaller issues which the court has taken up as well which have not gotten as much attention, one of which is a requirement in the law that states expand their Medicaid program for low-income Americans to help guarantee universal coverage in 2014. And then a potentially very consequential issue called severability. And what that is, essentially, if you throw the mandate out can the rest of the law survive? If the Supreme Court were to toss out the mandate, can you give us any scenarios? What are the other aspects of the law that might kind of come apart as a result? Well, you know, one of the primary promised benefits of the law was that everybody would be able to get insurance, that if you were sick, if you had cancer, if you had heart disease, you could go to an insurance company and say I want to buy a health insurance policy. And they couldn't turn you down. And they couldn't turn you down, nor could they cut you off if you got sick. And that this would help pay for the whole thing in a way, the fact that everybody being in it would sort of help with the costs, correct? Exactly. I mean, the principle of insurance is that if everybody's in the pool then it becomes more affordable because risk is spread.