The United States Supreme Court will be considering whether reducing the penalty for violating the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to $0 renders the ACA unconstitutional.  The Court of Appeals concluded that the “individual mandate is unconstitutional because it can no longer be read as a tax, and there is no other constitutional provision that justifies this exercise of congressional power.”  However, the court left open the question of whether the individual mandate could be severed from the rest of the ACA.  CSAC’s amicus brief is based on its adopted policy platform opposing shifts in health costs to counties, and opposing efforts to “reverse expansions to the Medi-Cal program, which will shift the responsibility of providing these individuals with healthcare from the Medi-Cal program to counties, which are required to provide services to the medically indigent.”