Deltek Principal Analyst Lauren Jones and Analyst Amanda White report.
After three months of grueling debate in the hearing on the controversial Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Supreme Court upheld the law, including the individual mandate for citizens to have health insurance. However, the court made it clear that the penalty for not having health insurance coverage is a tax—a mechanism Congress has power to exercise. Under this language, Americans are not necessarily being “forced” to purchase health insurance; rather, they are incented to in order to avoid being taxed. The ruling means that virtually every program created by the controversial law will move forward.
The ACA won’t have much of a direct impact on technology spending and the contracting market over the next few years in the federal IT market. Under the Obama administration, impacted federal agencies have already been moving ahead in implementing many of the provisions of the law. For example, the oversight offices mandated in the law, such as the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO), have been established and the technology for those offices to function has been installed and, most importantly, building the IT infrastructure needed to implement the provisions in the law has begun.
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