On June 25, the Supreme Court upheld the availability of subsidies in all 50states under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Thecourt affirmed in a 6–3 vote that the language in PPACA allows thegovernment to help people buy insurance (through subsidies or taxcredits) anywhere in the country and not only in states that haveestablished their own insurance exchanges. Chief Justice JohnRoberts wrote for the majority. Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alitodissented.

The court cited examples in the PPACA of “inartful drafting” andfound “relevant provisions to be ambiguous.” The court furtherexplained that the tax credits were necessary for the federalexchanges to function like state exchanges to avoid “the type ofcalamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid.” JusticeScalia wrote in his sharp dissent to the decision that “words nolonger have meaning if an exchange that is not established by astate is ‘established by the State.’”

The King v. Burwell ruling is the second casewhere the Supreme Court has decided in favor of the PPACA, allowingmillions of qualified individuals to keep the tax subsidies thathelp them afford to purchase health insurance coverage on a stateor federal exchange.

There was much speculation that if the decision had gone theother way, the PPACA would have been severely crippled.Health policy analysts projected that Individuals who receive thesesubsidies would struggle to afford insurance without that financialsupport. This could have resulted in healthy people withdrawingfrom the exchanges, causing rising premiums and making theinsurance unaffordable to people without employer-sponsoredinsurance coverage.

Read: 7 reactions to King v. Burwell ruling

While there are still legal challenges to PPACA, many expertspredict fewer challenges to the law for now.

What this decision means for employers

With this ruling and the subsidies remaining intact, nothingchanges as the provisions of PPACA continue to be implemented. Allof the existing provisions of PPACA remain in place, including:

• Employer mandate: The employer sharedresponsibility provisions of PPACA, often called “play or pay,” arestill in force. Employers must ensure that their administrativemeasures are in place to track and measure compliance with themandate in order to avoid the penalties that may be triggered whenemployees seek subsidized coverage through a government exchange.Subsidies generally are not available for employees who areeligible for employer-sponsored coverage, if the coverage offeredmeets certain affordability and minimum value thresholds.

• Information reporting: Applicable largeemployers and self-funded small employers must continue to preparefor the extensive reporting requirements under Internal RevenueCode sections 6055 and 6056 and ensure that they are capturing allof the data required to complete the IRS Forms 1094 and 1095 for2015.

• Excise tax (Cadillactax): Although the attempts to repeal this unpopularprovision of PPACA continue, employers should begin to work withtheir brokers to analyze the potential impact of the 40 percentexcise tax on high-cost plans that is scheduled to take effect in2018.

The court’s ruling maintains the status quo, so it is back tothe business of maintaining high value, affordable, andadministratively manageable employee health benefits programs foremployers.

Read: Kingv. Burwell decision a relief for HR managers