Supreme Court Upholds Obama Health Reforms

The Supreme Court upheld Barack Obama's health care reforms to insure another 32 million Americans on June 28 in a major victory for the president in the heat of a tight re-election contest.

Limitations were placed on the expansion of coverage to 16 million more poor Americans, but the key payment provision on Obama's signature domestic achievement, the individual mandate, was upheld in a tight 5-4 vote.

Two years after Obama signed into law an act to insure most of the 50 million uninsured Americans and prevent coverage from being refused on the basis of patients' medical histories, its fate lay in the hands of six men and three women.

Chief Justice John Roberts, the conservative-leaning leader of the court who is often a bete noire for Democrats, was this time the key swing vote who teamed up with the more liberal members of the bench to uphold the law.

Hundreds of protesters waving American flags or toting signs in support of the law had gathered from the small hours along with banks of TV cameras outside the court's neo-classical building opposite the Congress.