The U.S. Supreme Court ruling Thursday leaving in place a key provision of the Affordable Care Act may not be the decision some business groups wanted, but now the law is here to stay, many of those same groups are reluctantly learning to live with it.

"Questions about the effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act persist five years after its enactment," said David French, senior vice president for government relations at the National Retail Federation. "The ACA's impractical and unworkable regulations and requirements continue to cast a shadow on employer-sponsored health coverage."

In a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled the federal government could provide tax subsidies to help poor and middle-class people afford health insurance, according to the New York Times. The decision means the law will likely survive past 2017, when Obama leaves office.

The Affordable Care Act is not popular with many business groups. While critics including the National Federation of Independent Business remained silent on the case before the court, they were not shy about voicing their displeasure with the subsidies.

"(The law) was designed to subsidize health insurance for some Americans at the expense of others," said Karen Harned, executive director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center. "Local business owners remain among many groups of Americans for whom the law is a failure."

But where some saw failure, others saw opportunity. TechNet CEO Linda Moore said a partnership between government-run health exchanges and private sector Internet marketplaces could help get more uninsured Americans on insurance.

"TechNet strongly believes that leveraging the e-commerce expertise of entrepreneurs and private sector marketplaces will create powerful allies who can significantly improve the effort to cover more uninsured Americans," Moore said.

At least one group was ecstatic about the decisions. The American Nurses Association said the subsidies preserved under the decision would allow millions of Americans to stay healthy.

"Without the tax credits, many people would have been unable to obtain health insurance, thus limiting their access to routine preventive care and causing insurance costs to rise due to a sicker population," ANA said.

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