We founded CHIR – the Center on Health Insurance Reforms – in 2010, the year the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law. Our mission was, and is, to improve people’s “access to affordable and adequate health insurance by providing balanced, evidence-based research, analysis and strategic advice.” In our lifetimes, no federal policy has gone farther to expand coverage and improve access to health care than the ACA. At CHIR, we have therefore devoted the past decade plus to studying the impact of the law and identifying where it is working – and where it could be improved. For obvious reasons, we have watched with great trepidation as litigation to strike down the ACA, California v. Texas, made its way through the federal courts and ultimately to the Supreme Court.

Today, the justices, led by Justice Breyer, threw out the lawsuit, on the grounds that the plaintiffs had no standing to file the suit in the first place. This decision is a huge victory for the 23 million Americans who rely on the ACA for insurance coverage, particularly in the wake of a devastating worldwide pandemic that exposed just how essential access to health care can be.

It is also our hope that ACA opponents will finally recognize that the ACA is the law of the land and cease their longstanding efforts to have it struck down through increasingly bizarre and crackpot legal claims. It is time to put these battles to rest and devote our energies to building on the progress we have made.