(Another district court judge struck just the individual coverage requirement).
"Each additional coverage requirement, while they may seem well intentioned, also carries a cost," he said.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, has assailed the contraceptive coverage requirement as a threat to religious liberty.
Without an individual coverage requirement, Mr. Obama and insurers say, consumers could go without insurance until they needed care.
Yet, the fact that the act's central coverage requirement failed two constitutional tests ultimately did not matter, since it survived as a tax.
Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, who proposed the coverage requirement as an amendment to sweeping health legislation, said it could save millions of lives.
Writing for the majority, the chief justice held that the minimum coverage requirement (known as the mandate) represents a constitutional exercise of Congress' taxing powers.
He is not against buying catastrophic coverage, he said, but that alone would not meet the state's "minimum creditable coverage" requirement.
She also forcefully dismissed the claim that the contraceptive coverage requirement violates the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of religion.
Thirteen states and the District of Columbia also support the contraceptive coverage requirement: California, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.
Supporters of the contraceptive coverage requirement have filed 23 amicus briefs in the supreme court, including one filed by more than 20 medical organizations including: the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Nurses Association and the National Physicians Alliance.
