Supreme Court refuses to skip lower courts on healthcare reform law

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused Monday to bypass the lower courts and take up an immediate challenge to the constitutionality of the national healthcare reform law and its requirement that all those who can afford it have medical insurance by 2014.

The announcement concerned only the timing of a decision on the healthcare law and said nothing about how the court may finally rule. The justices rarely skip over the lower courts before taking up a constitutional question and have said they will do so only if a case is of such "imperative public importance" as to "require immediate determination" by the high court.
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