Obamacare Ruling Gives Insurers Green Light to Ramp Up Markets

The Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision upholding Obamacare Thursday will give health insurers more confidence in the Affordable Care Act exchanges, health-care analysts said.

“This favorable decision, though widely anticipated, puts additional wind in the sails of a market that has been developing significant momentum,” Katherine Hempstead, a senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in an email.

The court’s ruling that Republican challengers to the ACA didn’t have legal standing means insurers face no foreseeable barriers to their markets, which have been rebounding over the past several years. If the court had ruled that the law had ...