Some of the Supreme Court appear skeptical of the claim that, if they strike down the individual mandate provision, they must strike down the entirety of the Act. Early accounts of the justices from the courtroom appeared to be favoring severability but new reports have cast doubt – yet another example how artificial the denial of cameras and live coverage has become. As the argument unfolded, conservative justices appear to suggest that it really is an all-or-nothing proposition.
This was always been viewed a weak argument because of the preference of federal courts to minimize the degree to which they strike down federal laws. However, the Administration blundered in removing the common severability clause of the legislation — creating a game of chicken with the courts where a ruling against the individual mandate would torch the entire historic act. The hope for a “sticker shock” deterrent did not work when the trial court struck down the Act. It still seems a significant departure from past cases to strike down the entire act, including provisions not dependent on the individual mandate.
This matter is made more difficult by the confused and conflicted statements of both the Administration and the Justice Department. Initially, the Justice Department insisted that the individual mandate was essential to the Act, which would be fatally harmed if it were ruled unconstitutional. Then, as with other issues, the Justice Department changed its position on severability.
The argument did indicate that Scalia appears inclined to strike down the individual mandate in saying “One way or another, Congress will have to revisit it in toto.” Scalia added “Once you cut the guts out of it, who knows which parts were desired and which ones weren’t?” Even Justice Elena Kagan (who many felt should have recused herself from the case due to her prior positions as Obama’s Solicitor General) noted “The question is, is half a loaf better than no loaf?”
Even more worrisome for the Justice Department is the statement of Justice Anthony Kennedy who described it as an “extreme proposition” to allow the various insurance regulations to stand after the mandate was struck down.
The gamble of the Administration and Democratic leadership in pulling a severability clause now may have backfired in a major way.
Today, the justices are also considering whether the law’s proposed Medicaid expansion violates the Constitution as a form of conditional legislation. Congress routinely takes in more taxes than it needs so that it can return the money to states with conditions or “strings attached.” The question is whether this is a condition “so coercive as to pass the point at which pressure turns into compulsion.” However, the Court has routinely denied such claims while reserving the possibility that a condition might someday be so coercive as to be unconstitutional. The Court in South Dakota v. Dole did include a strong message that the Court would not dismiss such a claim categorically. It remains a viable claim but one without a successful track record.
I am going to bring a dog claim against federal employees, members of Congress and the federal judiciary on an equal protection of law theory. They all have to pay taxes and if they dont they lose their jobs and if they lose their jobs they lose their Godsgift to the less than one percenters health insurance coverage.
The Justices thought that if they had extended hearings that they would show off to the country. A better show on television is Question Time in the British Parliament. They speak the Kings English, they have a topic to discuss and they are short.
It should all stand or fail….. How else would you prevent abuse of a power that the president does not have…. Line item vetos…… To continue to do this gives too much power to the executive and Sct…… My three cents worth…. Still don’t think it’s ripe to hear…..
Striking down the individual mandate while keeping the rest of the law intact will actually result in even more Americans becoming uninsured. This is because the insurance providers are seeing costs increase dramatically due mainly to the Obamacare requirement that they not deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, and other regulations being imposed. As the cost of the premiums rise, even less people will be entering the market as the mandate to participate in it no longer exists, and more will be leaving.
I think also at this time…it’s a dog and pony show….designed to embarrass Obama who needs no help….. As I see it now….the elections his to loose….m
I like Question Time, too, but there has been no better show in the country this week than the hearings at the Court. The justices of all philosophical persuasions demonstrated why they’re qualified to sit on the highest bench. (I include Thomas even though he didn’t speak.) They should build on this and allow cameras in the courtroom. I don’t think the arguments would have been different in any material respect had cameras been there. Plus, it would have shown the country that there are at least nine people in the government who have brains and aren’t afraid to use them. The ideological and political extremists will never be satisfied with any ruling, but I think the American people now have a much better understanding of how diligent the Court works, how intimidating it must be to stand before all nine of them in the well and how an argument can actually have two persuasive sides.
I think Obama beats Mitt Romney. Romney is not much different from Obama if you actually look at the policies they’ve implemented while in office, regardless of his campaign rhetoric.
I always think of W.C. Fields pulling on a string hanging out of his suit jacket. By the time he finished he only had a collar left.
The federal judiciary has gone right-wing equal to the level in ~1937.
“Advance to the rear! …”
I do not think the Supremes are compelled to solve any problem they create; they can declare the mandate (and anything else they see fit) as “unconstitutional” and therefore unenforceable and kick the rest back to the Congress to fix as they see fit. Let them fight it out.
As far as I can tell, there is no rule anywhere that says they have to provide a viable alternative solution, they can just say, “Here are the things you have done that you cannot do.”
Having said that, I think it is clear any provisions that take effect prior to the 2014 mandate need not be touched, the mandate is obviously not a necessary component if they are already in effect and it is not.
I have been keeping up with this some and it seems as though there might not be a happy medium in all this. I am interested to see how it turns out, hopefully for the good of everyone one way or the other.
I think from from a perspective based on the classical right/left paradigm, a striking down of Obamacare by the Supreme Court would be considered a left wing decision. Legally requiring citizens to purchase a service from a select group of large corporations is legislation born of right wing ideology.
I would argue that the vast majority of Obama’s proposed and implemented policies could be characterized as right wing. Eric Holder’s speech a couple of weeks ago, in which he attempted to convince law students that a constitutional view of “due process” does not include notifying the accused of the charges, a jury trial, confronting the accuser, representation by legal counsel, or judicial review or oversight, is perhaps the most right winged speech ever delivered by a U.S. Attorney General.
Neil Davis, The protestors in front of the Supreme Court would certainly disagree with you on that. Planned parenthood and the progressive wing of the democratic party is protesting in favor of it while the tea party is out there against it yelling about Sandra Fluke and birth control.
Increases in health care costs have nothing to do with the Heath care law. The high price of health care
and the related cost of Insurace is caused almost exclusively by the insistance of corporations who control the bulk of health care and insurance needing to make and being allowed to make enormous profits. Drug companies gouge American consumers, who have more than likely borne the lion’s share of the development of those drugs via their tax dollars, while selling the same drugs to Canadian and other patients in Europe more reasonable prices. Insurance companies make the money charging high premiums and avoiding paying for care. We will never solve this problem unless we are willing to clearly define it.
The President’s game of chicken on severabilty is just one of the huge mistakes he made on health care.
The loudest voices at Tuesday morning’s demonstrations outside the Supreme Court came from those defending women’s rights.
For the second day, hundreds of protestors convened at the Supreme Court building as the highest court in the nation continued to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. But unlike earlier protests, the issue of women’s rights became the focal point of these demonstrations.
Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Organization for Women, and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health each brought scores of supporters from throughout the country to demonstrate in the nation’s capital, supplying them with T-shirts and signs and leading them in chants.
While marching, protestors carried signs that featured messages such as “We Love ObamaCare” and “Protect Women’s Health.” One toddler, who was joining his mother in the demonstration, touted a small sign that read, “Every Mommy Deserves Health Care.”
In between chants, demonstrators indicated they were drawn to the rally to voice their support for the benefits women received as part of the health care reform law.
“We’re here to protect health care for women,” Langan Denhard, a sophomore at the University of Maryland–College Park, told Campus Progress. “The Affordable Care Act guarantees access to mammograms, cancer screenings, and other vital health procedures.”
Indeed, the law eliminates co-payments for the aforementioned preventive services and ensures that those and other basic health services are covered.
“ObamaCare also protects women from insurance discrimination,” noted Veronica Aveis, the Manager of Political Affairs at Planned Parenthood–New York City. “If we don’t keep it, it will be a major setback for women everywhere.”
Aveis, who traveled to the rally from her job in New York, is referring to the fact that before the Affordable Care Act was implemented, it was legal in most states to charge higher premiums to people because of their gender.
But not all of the demonstrators are happy with the changes. Tea Party groups organized a simultaneous counter-protest outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning, though with far fewer supporters. Those who did show up were steadfast in their opposition to all of healthcare reform, even when pressed with the fact that the law makes it significantly easier for women to access crucial preventive health services.
“Nobody had a problem accessing those services before,” said Sylvia Smith, a Tea Party coordinator from Littleton, New Hampshire. “We need to keep fighting this socialism.”
Unfortunately, the comments from Smith and others protesting against the Affordable Care Act reflect a troubling disconnect from reality. Until the legislation was passed, many low-income women didn’t have access to preventative screenings for the top killers of women because they couldn’t afford it. But over the past two years, 20 million women have been able to receive preventive care with no co-pay through the law.
Despite the Tea Party opposition, women’s rights advocates dominated the morning protests with overwhelming numbers. Many of those who demonstrated said they plan to return on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court concludes its hearings on the Affordable Care Act. The court is expected to deliver its ruling in late June.
Graham White is a journalism intern for Campus Progress.
Neil, Do you think women’s advocate groups are part of the right wing?
The only reason that is occurring is because the Obamacare legislation was proposed and passed by the Democratic Party. The groups you mention are, perhaps unconsciously, playing their proper party affiliated roles.
But is it not a classical right wing idea to coerce individuals to act in such a way that it benefits, profits, and is in the interest of, big business? That is what Obamacare does.
Other parts of the legislation could be considered left wing, such as the new rules being imposed upon the insurance companies concerning what they are required to cover in the plans they offer. But of course, any additional costs incurred by the companies due to these rules will be passed on to the consumer in higher premiums. But I believe the main statute, which is the individual mandate, is right wing in nature.
@Neil Davis: I am a progressive liberal, but I still think it is unconstitutional for the federal government to demand I buy health insurance from a for-profit corporation or pay a penalty that is a percentage of my income.
I don’t think women’s advocate groups, as you call them, are generally considered right wing. But if such groups are supporting the individual mandate, they are supporting a right wing policy, in my humble opinion.
As you know, Mussolini is considered to be an extreme right wing political figure. His policies, which were termed fascist, centered around using legislation involving private businesses as partners with the government in enacting political policies.
Verilli has been anything but a strong advocate.
Tony,
Then that is a consistent way for a “progressive liberal” to think. You are a self described left winger opposed to right wing legislation. It makes sense to me.
A progressive liberal would be much more comfortable with all Americans being covered under Medicare, which is more of a left wing proposal.
The Wednesday morning argument offered the Court three mutually exclusive options: strike down all of the Affordable Care Act along with the mandate (the challengers’ position), strike down only two core changes in the way the health insurance system works (the government position), and strike down nothing but the mandate (the position of a Court-appointed lawyer). Not one seemed to be especially appealing to members of the Court, and each of the three lawyers who came to the lectern faced tough and often skeptical questioning, from across the bench.
Congress’s capacity to react in a sensible way also came into some question, particularly from Justice Scalia and, in a way, from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, both of whom seemed to harbor doubts that the lawmakers would be up to the task of working out a new health care law if this one failed, either totally or partially. Scalia noted the problems in the filibuster-prone Senate. Kennedy wondered whether expecting Congress to perform was a reference to “the real Congress or the hypothetical Congress.”SCOTUS BLOG
Mom,
I belive the women’s rights groups, which really seem to be women’s entitlement groups, are supporting Obamacare so strongly because they love the idea of not having to pay for birth control out of pocket anymore. They think it’s going to be “free”.
Neil, Tony C is a Ron Paul supporter. Ron Paul is not a progressive on healthcare. Quite the opposite is true. Neil, Don’t call me “mom”, again, please.
@Neil: That is basically what I advocate, either that or a version of Sweden’s national health care system; in which private insurance and hospitals can still operate if they wish, but everybody is entitled to basic health coverage and emergency care, at government-owned hospitals, with salaried doctors and personnel (earning essentially the same pay and benefits as our military doctors and healthcare personnel).
If the rich want private suites and instant care, they can pay for it, if being treated like the military treats a private is good enough for you (and I thought that it was excellent when I was one) then go to the government hospital and wait your turn. Bring a book and an iPod. It isn’t that bad.
@Swarthmore: I completely disagree with Ron Paul on healthcare and taxes. I agree with Ron Paul on wars and civil rights, which I consider more important. Do not attribute beliefs to me that I do not hold; it is an untruth.
Perhaps Tony C would actually be considered a libertarian then, espousing the currently radical “if you want something, you pay for it yourself” idea.
Oops, I guess not. Sorry Tony.
Tony C He is for civil rights for a few certainly not women and gay people. . Let’s not make this about Ron Paul. He did not go anywhere in his party.
The Medicaid argument is just finishing
Paul Clement is concluding his rebuttal now. In the second half of the argument there were more voices, including justice Alito, for the idea that the Medicaid expansion is coercive but it did not seem at all a likely outcome. The questions were too abstract about general principles. One very plausible middle ground outcome would be to say that there are some limits on the federal government’s ability to revoke all Medicaid funds in response to a state’s decision just to refuse the expansion. What those limits are would be left for another case. But I don see the Court going further than that. The Chief repeatedly suggested that maybe the states gave up this aspect of the sovereignty by accepting federal funds. The SG closed with an argument that the health care statute as a whole including the mandate was essential to the public receiving the “blessings of liberty” because health care is so important. All the usual caveats apply about how you cant be sure from an argument. SCOTUS BLOG
How is Paul not for gay people?
Neil , Read his newsletter if you want to know more.
[If the ACA is struck down,] Republicans will need a Plan B. Unfortunately, they wasted the past three years that might have developed one. If the Supreme Court doesn’t rescue them from themselves, they’ll be heading into this election season arguing, in effect, Our plan is to take away the government-mandated insurance of millions of people under age 65, and replace it with nothing. And we’re doing this so as to better protect the government-mandated insurance of people over 65—until we begin to phase out that insurance, too, for everybody now under 55,” – David Frum.
@Neil: Swarthmore is telling you to read a newsletter that Ron Paul did not write, which she knows. His name was on the letterhead, but he has since disavowed those views, which she also knows.
Further, Swarthmore is saying Ron Paul is against civil rights for women, which is a lie. Ron Paul is a pro-lifer (I am not). Being pro-life does not mean he would deny women the rights of habeas corpus, a trial, divorce, or any other right exercisable by men. It is a gross distortion of Paul’s position to say he is against civil rights for women.
I am not the one “making this about Paul,” Swarthmore brought it up, and if she wants to hijack this thread to be about Ron Paul, so be it. I will respond if attacked.
Tony C, I prefer to forget Paul. His party has.
After nearly two hours of arguments over the health care law’s significant expansion of the Medicaid program, it was impossible to determine whether a clear majority of Supreme Court justices were leaning toward a particular ruling.
As expected, liberal justices signaled their view that the challenge should fail, and conservative justices — notably Antonin Scalia — seemed sympathetic to the idea that the Medicaid expansion is unconstitutional. That might not seem surprising. But many legal scholars were shocked that the Court even agreed to hear this challenge. And the consequences of an adverse ruling would be so techtonic for the federalist system that the ambiguity of the conservative justice’s opinions is worth noting and taking seriously. from TPM
@Neil: I stand with libertarians on certain rights and beliefs. I do not believe the government has any business in drugs, I do not believe in preemptive war, I believe in most applications of the Commerce Clause overstep federal government bounds. I hold that quaint belief in the right to be charged and have a trial and be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before a lifetime incarceration or summary execution. I believe in full legal equality of all races, genders, sexual orientations, creeds and religions.
However, I have no problem with socially funded common good programs that produce goods we all need or benefit from, like road, power, water, and information infrastructure, scientific research, public education, public healthcare, law enforcement, food and drug inspection, anti-pollution enforcement, the armed forces and national defense, etc.
I like how Frum characterizes the Republican position: “Our plan is to take away the government-mandated insurance of millions of people under age 65, and replace it with nothing.”
What’s funny is that the Republicans have proposed an individual mandate of their own. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/05/paul_ryans_individual_mandate.html
Why do people listen to these clowns. They lack basic intelligence. The only thing that matters to them and to the general public is which team can get their legislation enacted. If you get your legislation enacted, your team gets points. So stupid.
The Limiting Principle
JB
Hey kids? Are you down in the dumps after Tuesday’s oral argument? Do you want a limiting principle that justifies the individual mandate but doesn’t give Congress unlimited power under the Commerce Clause? Fine. Here are three of them. Pick your favorite.
1. The Moral Hazard Principle. Congress can regulate activities that substantially affect commerce. Under the necesary and proper clause, Congress can require people to engage in commerce when necessary to prevent problems of moral hazard created by its regulation of commerce. But if there is no problem of moral hazard, Congress cannot compel commerce. Courts can choose different standards of review to decide how much they want to defer to Congress’s conclusion. Even under the strictest standard of review the individual mandate passes muster.
Explanation: The guaranteed issue and community rating rules prevent insurers from discriminating against uninsured people because of preexisting conditions. These rules creates a moral hazard: people will wait until they get sick to buy insurance. Congress can require them to buy insurance early to prevent gaming the system. (Actually, it exacerbates an already existing moral hazard in all health insurance, because insureds know more about their health condition than insurers).
Why not broccoli? There is no moral hazard problem created when people refuse to buy broccoli. It’s true that buying and eating broccoli might make you healthier, but people don’t wait until they are sick to buy broccoli. That’s because broccoli is not going to do them much good at that point. In this sense, broccoli doesn’t work like health insurance.
Why not cars? Under this principle, Congress can’t make everyone buy a car in order to help the auto industry. There is no moral hazard that Congress is responding to that is caused by people strategically waiting to buy cars. Note, by the way, that if fewer people buy cars, the price of cars might go down, not up, as Justice Scalia thought.
Closest analogy: In United States v. Comstock, the Supreme Court held that Congress could create a civil commitment system for mentally ill prisoners following their criminal sentences when no state wanted to take them. Congress had created a situation in which after long prison terms connections to states were attenuated, and no state wanted to risk being stuck with the costs of civil commitment. As a result, Congress could create its own system.
2. The Interstate Externalities Principle. Congress can regulate activities that substantially affect commerce. Under the necesary and proper clause, Congress can also require people to engage in commerce when necessary to prevent spillover effects on states, interstate externalities and solve interstate collective action problems. But Congress can’t require people to engage in commerce if there are no serious interstate externalities or spillover effects, or if Congress is not seriously attempting to solve a collective action problem. Once again, courts can adopt higher or lesser standards of review to prevent sham or pretextual attempts, but even under the strictest standard, the individual mandate is fine.
Explanation: States that adopt guaranteed issue and community ratings rules will become magnets for sick people, driving up rates, and uninsureds may flock to states without individual mandates, further driving up rates in the states they leave. This discourages many states from adopting this combination of reforms. Put differently, states might adopt these rules only if other states did so as well. Only Massachusetts, because of peculiar features of its health care markets, was able to make its reforms work on its own.
The incentive structures just described create a national problem that requires a national solution. Congress had plenty of evidence to this effect; therefore even under a strict standard of review, the mandate is constitutional.
What about broccoli? A broccoli mandate doesn’t work like an insurance mandate, because of the way that insurance works. First, a mandate to buy broccoli is unlikely to cause people to leave Massachusetts in significant numbers. Second, and more importantly, a broccoli mandate won’t make Massachusetts a magnet for broccoli lovers or people who desperately need broccoli. They can buy broccoli in their home states. Broccoli doesn’t work like health insurance because grocers don’t refuse you the right to buy broccoli because of a preexisting condition. On the other hand, insurance is based on risk pools, and so it is a different kind of product.
What this justification most resembles: Social security disability programs, which solve collective action problems between states. By creating a national system of disability insurance, no state becomes a magnet for the disabled and employers don’t leave for states without disability insurance.
3. The “It’s a tax, stupid!” Principle. Congress can regulate economic activities that cumulatively affect interstate commerce. But if Congress wants to regulate inactivity, it must use the taxing power instead. Congress can use its taxing power to give people a choice between engaging in commerce or paying a tax. The rules for the taxing power are well settled since the New Deal. The tax (1) must promote the general welfare, (2) must raise revenue; and (3) and it must not be a criminal penalty in disguise. The individual mandate passes this test with flying colors. The tax was estimated to raise some 4 billion dollars in revenue. In earlier cases, involving taxes on guns and drugs, the Court found that 500 dollars was sufficient.
Justice Ginsburg worried about the revenue question in the oral arguments on Monday. She argued that the individual mandate was designed to give incentives to buy insurance. If it works perfectly, she argued, nobody will pay, so it won’t raise revenue. That argument proves too much– it would also apply to taxes on contraband, drugs and guns, which the Court has previously upheld.
But there’s an even more important response to Ginsburg’s concern. That’s not the way the individual mandate was actually designed. The penalty was not set to ensure total compliance. It was not set to be equivalent to the most expensive health care premium available, but only to the average amount of health care premiums calculated nationally. That means that Congress expected that some people would rather pay the penalty. Congress knew it wouldn’t get 100 percent compliance, and the bill was not intended to ensure 100 percent compliance. This is like a tax on pollution, which allows some people to continue to pollute if it is worth it to them to pay the tax.
Paul Clement argued that the individual mandate is a direct tax, like a head tax, and therefore has to be directly apportioned by state population under Article I, section 9. This is incorrect. Head taxes are taxes that you can’t get out of by anything you do. They just tax you for living. But you can easily get out of the individual mandate. Just buy insurance. The mandate is like a tax on people who don’t invest in solar panels or antipollution devices. Such taxes give people a choice; they won’t get 100 percent compliance, so they raise revenue.
In sum, without giving Congress unlimited powers under the Commerce Clause, the Court can uphold the mandate under the moral hazard theory, the interstate externalities theory, or the “It’s a tax, stupid!” theory. Tony Kennedy, John Roberts, are you listening?
Posted 2:50 PM by JB [link] From Balkanization
Home
Books by Balkinization Bloggers
Sanford Levinson, Framed
Sanford Levinson, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Mary Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences
Mary Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Living Originalism
Neil
I am not enthusiastic about the attempt to make the word “entitlement” mean “not entitled” unless you also point out that rich people have their sense of entitlement which can be questioned. All rights are claimed at first, and can be questioned, including freedom of speech.
I hear you Tony C. The unfortunate part of all this debate is that it really isn’t going to matter for too much longer. Like Ron Paul says, the country is broke. Period. There is no feasible way for the national debt to be paid back. In fact, there is no feasible way for us to even prevent it from continually growing exponentially. So we will just continue as if nothing is wrong until all the chickens come home to roost. When that happens, rather than being concerned about free birth control, we’ll be wondering how we’re going to turn the lights back on.
It’s no surprise Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia isn’t a fan of President Obama’s health care law. But his disdain was on full display during both sessions of Wednesday’s arguments.
In the morning session on the question of how much of the law should stand if the mandate is ruled unconstitutional, Scalia cited the horsetrading that was required to pass the bill — including the politically embarrassing, and failed, Cornhusker Kickback. He also admitted that he’d like to see the whole law fall if the mandate is ruled out of bounds.
In the afternoon he took pains to remind the Court of the unpopularity of the individual mandate.
The exchange occurred when Solicitor General Donald Verrilli rejected a hypothetical that relied on the notion of Congress passing a massive new tax. This, he argued, would have to overcome massive political constraints.
At that point Scalia chimed in: He would’ve thought the individual mandate would also be too much of a political liability to ever pass Congress.
His fiery outbursts from the bench marked the three days of oral arguments, and will likely be reflected in his opinions when rulings come down in June. TPM
I agree Martin. Everyone wants their handout. Especially the filthy rich. And they get it with 700 billion dollar bank bailouts funded by the American taxpayer. TARP anyone? Feel like giving billions of dollars to rich farmers? Well, too bad, your tax dollars have been funding that sort of thing for decades. They call them farm subsidies. Perhaps you’d like to give a few hundred million dollars to elite foreign dictators? Well, you contribute to that as well. It’s called foreign aid, and it sounds real charitable. Oh, and don’t forget the money you gave to GM and Chrysler. Almost everyone is on some type of Welfare. Republican and Democrats alike can’t give enough of the stuff away.
Again, that this particular Supreme Court would strike down the opportunity to make constitutional government coercion of citizens into destructive economic relationships with corporate giants is simply unthinkable. Before that ever happened, Texas would prove that corporations are citizens by hanging one of them.
The rest has simply been black robed theater.
Argument recap: Will Medicaid be sacrificed?
Analysis
Unless a closing oration by a top government lawyer stirs some real sympathy for the poor, the new health care law’s broad expansion of the Medicaid program that serves the needy may be sacrificed to a historic expression of judicial sympathy for states’ rights. It probably would require the Court to be really bold, to strike down a program passed by Congress under its spending power, and to do so for the first time in 76 years, but the temptation was very much in evidence in the final round of the Court’s hearings this week on the Affordable Care Act. It probably would be done by a 5-4 vote.
Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., and his principal adversary this week, Washington attorney Paul D. Clement, took turns as the final minutes of the third day of argument wound down to make a plea to the Court to think more broadly about their coming decision on not only the Medicaid expansion, but on another key piece of the ACA: the individual insurance mandate that the Court had explored on Tuesday. Verrilli edged toward the emotional, while Clement was crisp and blunt in making a final plea for the Court to sweep away all of the new law. They stepped back as the Court left the bench, to start the task — far from easy — or sorting through four profound legal or constitutional issues they had heard since Monday. SCOTUS blog
@Neil: There is no feasible way for the national debt to be paid back.
That is simply untrue. The national debt is currently equal to one year’s worth of the national gross income, and the national debt is financed with an interest rate of about 1%.
If you had a debt (say a mortgage on a house) that equalled one year of your salary, with an interest rate of 1%, would you be worried? If so, what in the world FOR?
I will not argue that the money has been spent wisely, or our financial policy is fiscally sensible, but the truth is that the current level of debt is not very worrisome at all, and people that think it is are responding to big-number alarmism and laughably ridiculous extrapolations. They should be more worried about the Federal Reserve printing money and giving it away to Banks. That is a different thing. Debt, per se, is not a big deal, it could triple and not be harmful
No public health care for the Supreme Court, for Congress or federal employees because my taxes pay for it and the taxes are mandatory. If the Congress can not pass a law which requires me to pay a tax for my own health care, how can they require me to pay a tax to pay for Scalia’s healthcare? Scalia must agree that the original Framers of the Constitution would never have agreed to have tax payers pay for John Marshal’s doctor bills. Their original intent was to let the doctors come to the home, bleed the patient, and be paid right there on the spot. No payment, not bleeding.
That liberals are now defending the mandate shows just how far we have fallen down the rabbit hole of up is down and inside is out.
* This is not a mandate that we have health care.
* This is not a mandate that the government provide health care to anyone as they do the the Supreme Court justices or to members of both houses
* This is not a mandate that health care costs be kept low. If costs are NOT kept low by every one being forced to pay, there will be NO penalty for the the insurance giants that sets those high costs.
* This is not a mandate regulating how much insurance companies can raise their prices each year. There are no funded provisions for any such regulation and the government has seen fit to keep out of it alltogether by giving it over to the states to regulate — WITH NO MONEY TO ENFORCE THEM/b>.
This is a mandate that citizens pay private, profit making companies for insurance that those companies can claim is for health care costs. Moreover, those private giant behemoths can decide what they want to charge for that claimed service. There is no funded regulation for what they charge, no mandate that they do not gouge, only a mandate the citizen pay for that service whether he or she wants to or not, regardless of whether he or she can afford to pay for it or not. The government doesn’t decide what the insurance companies should be able to charge, but they do decide which citizens are poor enough so they don’t have to pay what ever the insurance giant tells them to pay.
Based upon what the government currently thinks about citizens getting any service at all, on their total willingness in both parties to put the social safety net on the chopping block just to look like “serious people”, I imagine one will have to be pretty poor indeed to get anything other than a sheriff knocking on your door and telling you your social security checks will be impounded from now on until you pay up for your insurance.
If the Supreme Court Jesters rule that the Federal Government may not impose an individual mandate for Health Insurance, do they not also have to rule such mandates unconstitutional if imposed by the States, as in Massachusetts, for example? Or, does a ruling against only the Federal Government mandate leave State mandates for both Health and Automobile insurance intact? Does anything in this inherent contradiction even matter? After all, like Bush v Gore in 2000, the Court can simply say that what it rules on one day, in the interests of only one man, may not apply as precedent regarding any other man or case, ever — meaning, in effect, that one Supreme Court can shackle all successive Supreme Courts in perpetuity, and that later Supreme Courts will dutifully observe and passively submit to this hobbling by the dead hand of the past.
In any event, if the federal mandate goes down, but the state mandate stays, then Mitt Romney can run against Barack Obama for failing to accomplish a mandate on the Federal level that Romney accomplished in Massachusetts — but now wishes that he hadn’t. How the so-called “conservative” Jesters resolve this political dilemma in the interest of their fellow conservative Mitt Romney — as they have shown in the past every partisan inclination to do — will probably prove decisive. After all, the Supreme Court does, as someone once truly said, follow (or even determine) the election returns.
I like your idea TalkinDog.
this seemed oddly appropriate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3bjMtqpGBw&feature=related
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3bjMtqpGBw&w=420&h=315%5D
Murry,
Have you read the tenth amendment? “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively…”
Yes, the states themselves can constitutionally pass laws that the federal government can’t.
A commenter on FDL, See Here: Marblex, @March 28th, 2012 at 5:21 pm said it far better than I can,
“Look. The administration rested its entire argument on two premises, both demonstrably false:
1. EVERYONE in the country, either now or inevitably in the future will become a health care customer. Uninsured people who become catastrophically injured or ill foist the cost of their care on all of us (duh — that’s what it means to live in a civilized nation where burdens and benefits are shared).
2. Requiring everyone (presumably the “everyone” that is comprising the total existing and future market for “health care”) is an appropriate way to share the cost of those who can’t afford health care.
RESPONSE:
1. “Everyone” will eventually be in the market for health care. LIE. People who don’t get sick will never be “in the market” for health care. Nor will people who do not go to doctors, for instance, Christian Scientists and people who simply don’t like doctors. Since the entire foundation of Congress’ inexcusable, illogical and unprecedented overreach by Commerce is that health care is something EVERYONE will need and, as shown, that is simply not the case, then there is no reason to treat this effort by Congress to subsidize the private for profit insurance industry by mandate.
2. Buying insurance DOES NOT necessarily mean you will get the health care you need. If the health care you need isn’t covered by your insurance policy, you will have to buy it yourself. The minimum coverage mandated by the ADA will pay for doctor visits, minor surgeries and maternity care (including an up to 2 day hospital stay — just so you know most C sections require 3-4 days). The policy mandated by the ADA DOES NOT FURNISH: (a) extended hospital care; (b) catastrophic care or (c) catastrophic trauma/post trauma care. Bottom line, forcing everyone to buy this policy will not remedy the problem described in #1 above, to wit: the uninsured are a burden on society. Guess what? Even people WITH insurance often find themselves bankrupted by medical bills. Between claims denials, deductibles, policy limits and the ultimate weapon, STOP LOSS, the point at which the carrier simply will NOT pay one more cent, you can STILL GO BROKE PAYING MEDICAL BILLS EVEN IF YOU HAVE INSURANCE.
I would remind all of you: DOCTORS and NURSES and health care professionals provide HEALTH CARE. Insurance companies sell insurance. Insurance SOMETIMES pays for health care, sometimes not.
It is obvious from oral argument that the Administration’s impetus for supporting this legislation is a desire to fix the MARKET and NOT to provide health care to citizens.
If that were the case, we would either nationalize health service like Great Britain did, or establish a common revenue funded by tax contributions, which money is then used to pay between 2-3% for administrative costs ( as opposed to 10-15% costs PLUS of private insurers; bloated executive salaries and bonuses included, PLUS and most importantly, stockholder dividends– leaving only a tiny fraction of your premium dollars to be spent actually paying for your healthcare). The public payer fund by contrast, can spend 97+ cents on every dollar ACTUALLY PAYING FOR HEALTH CARE SERVICES.
We could even give such a public payer a name… I dunno.. uhm… Medicare?
Finally, if NOT buying something is Commerce, then there isn’t anything that isn’t Commerce and, by and through the Commerce clause, the US government becomes a government of unlimited power.
The ADA MUST fail.
Nationalize health services or expand Medicare. Either or both would be entirely constitutional and wouldn’t require acute mental gymnastics, torturing logic or language to justify such legislation.”
Single Payer Is Doomed Too
Jamelle Bouie
March 28, 2012
If the Affordable Care Act is overturned for partisan reasons, there’s nothing to stop the Court from doing the same to other reforms.
Jonathan Bernstein describes the emerging liberal position on the Supreme Court and health care:
[T]he Roberts Court is unscrupulous, unprincipled, and nakedly partisan, and are going after the ACA for purely partisan reasons. So if only we passed single-payer, everything would be fine.
This sounds ridiculous to Bernstein, and it sounds ridiculous to me as well. The constitutionality of the individual mandate is straightforward; to borrow from the New York Times—“Congress has indisputable authority to regulate national markets and provide for the general welfare through its broad power to tax. Nothing about the mandate falls outside those clearly delineated powers.” If the Court overturns the individual mandate, it will have less to do with precedent and more to do with an ideological opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which was manufactured at the moment that liberals adopted conservative ideas for health care reform.
In a world where the Supreme Court overturns health care reform for nakedly partisan reasons, what exactly will stop them from doing the same to single-payer health care, or any other scheme for universal insurance that liberals can devise? I have an answer!
Nothing, nothing at all.
Breaking Headline:
Bouie: Don’t Expect Single Payer If Mandate Struck Down American Prospect
http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/wed-march-28-2012-mark-ruffalo?xrs=synd_facebook
I think the only mandate that will pass muster with this partisan Supreme Court is the mandate that corporations are people and therefore corporations can control us all.
if the Affordable Care Act is overturned for partisan reasons, there’s nothing to stop the Court from doing the same to other reforms.
That has always been the case as was made explicit by Bush versus
Gore in 2000. It hardly matters if they now overturn a right wing wet dream or not (and you can rest assured they won’t – even though it requires a huge sacrifice where they could just taste dealing Obama a stinging defeat).
But let’s say they did go for the oh-so-sweet policitcal killI and strike down the mandate, I imagine they would have a much harder time overturning a government managed health care than they would this conservative fiasco for which liberals are scurrying to carry water but which is nonetheless designed purely to prop up the insurance company market and allow them to continue shooting fish in a barell (only now with free government enforcement). Moreover, If the case in point was a streight forward government run health care program, the administration’s lawyer wouldn’t have to bend his arguments into pretzel logic; this is a tax but it is not a tax.
A government managed health care system (unlike happy-birthday private enterprise) would not be difficult for Obama to sell or to implement as he would have a very large majority of the country behind him. Sure, he would have to work for it and market it so it sounded like a bill that was legalizing public hanging. But regardless, it would not fill his campaign coffers nor his ideological frame of reference which is that meritocracy is simply a temporary misspelling of aristocracy.
But regardless, it would not fill his campaign coffers nor his ideological frame of reference which is that meritocracy is simply a temporary misspelling of aristocracy.
I meant to add on to that, “so it ain’t gonna happen and no one has to worry about whether or not the current crop of black robed corporate ass-wipes would strike down universal health care or not because with this administration, such legislation is the very last thing anyone has to worry about, and even then only after hell freezes over.”
And trust me, while our attention is focused on this and other impossibilities, hell is doing anything but freezing over.
Rafflaw,
Corporations are people. They really are. It’s actually a group of people that make up a business. Just as the government is people. The difference is that the government really can control us all, the corporations can’t, unless of course the government gives the corporations the ability to do so.
As the saying goes, I’ll believe corporations are people they day Texas hangs one of them.
Gov. Perry would commute the sentence.
Brooklin, Just heard some hedge fund guy on TV say to buy the health insurance stocks if the whole mandate is struck down because their profits will increase because they won’t be required to insure those with pre-existng conditions.
@Swarthmore: I’d bet against that hedge fund guy. Healthcare stocks went UP in response to Obamacare passing, in anticipation of record profits due to the individual mandate. That is very valuable to the the health insurance companies; I have read elsewhere (by financial experts) that their financial benefits of Obamacare outweigh the added costs many times over.
That is how Obama got them to let it pass in the first place (plus promising them under the table that the public option would fail, which it did, due to Obama’s efforts via Rahm and Liebermann).
As it stands, I think the supremes can, theoretically, simply make the mandate unconstitutional and leave the rest alone. Insurance companies could still be required to cover pre-existing conditions, and have no individual mandate. That is part of the current debate.
Personally I think they should only be allowed to deny coverage based on a pre-existing condition if there is actual medical evidence, peer-reviewed journal studies, that show an undisclosed condition is definitely a factor in the condition for which coverage is sought. An insurance company actually claimed that undisclosed teenage acne was a pre-existing condtiion and reason to deny coverage for breast cancer, of which the insured then died. That is ludicrous.
The Senate on Thursday thwarted Democratic plans to strip billions of dollars in tax breaks from the largest oil companies, just an hour or so after President Obama urged the chamber to kill off the deductions.
Lawmakers voted 51-47 to block Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D-N.J.) bill. Sixty votes were needed to advance the measure.
Two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, both from Maine — crossed party lines and voted to repeal the tax breaks. Four Democrats — Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska), Mary Landrieu (La.), Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Jim Webb (Va.) — voted against the bill.
Even if the bill had gained Senate approval, House passage was extremely unlikely, but the vote will likely play a role in the Democrats’ election-year message. Vulnerable incumbents like Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) toed the party line on oil subsidies, and it seems likely that voters in Massachusetts and Nevada will be reminded of this morning’s vote in the fall.
The above is an illustration of the fact that only legislation that is beneficial to corporations has a chance to get sixty votes whether Obama supports it or not. Single payer will not pass the current congress.
How did legal observers and Obamacare backers get it so wrong?
By Greg Sargent
I didn’t mention this yesterday, but in his interview with me about the limiting principle, former Reagan Solicitor General Charles Fried was scaldingly critical of the willingness of the conservative bloc of Supreme Court justices to traffic in some of the most well-worn Tea Party tropes about Obamacare.
“I was appalled to see that at least a couple of them were repeating the most tendentious of the Tea Party type arguments,” Fried said. “I even heard about broccoli. The whole broccoli argument is beneath contempt. To hear it come from the bench was depressing.”
Which raises a question: How did so many commentators predicting this would be a slam dunk for the Obama administration get it so wrong?
Many people have blamed Obama Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s poor defense of the law for the sudden jeopardy Obamacare finds itself in, and there’s no denying he was unprepared to answer questions that we’ve known for months would be central to the case.
But there’s another explanation for the botched prediction: Simply put, legal observers of all stripes, and Obamacare’s proponents, including those in the administration, badly misjudged, and were too overconfident about, the tone, attitude and approach that the court’s conservative bloc, particularly Justice Scalia, would take towards the administration’s arguments.
Keep in mind: Many observers, Obama officials included, spent weeks treating Scalia like a potential swing vote on the case. Lawyers defending the law wrote some of their briefs and opinions with an eye towards persuading Scalia. They consciously invoked Scalia’s own words from a 2005 opinion affirming Congress’s power to control local medical marijuana in hopes it signaled he might be open to the administration’s defense of the individual mandate.
This now looks like a terrible misjudgment. During oral arguments this week, Scalia invoked the broccoli argument to question the goverment’s case. He mocked the government’s position with a reference to the “cornhusker kickback,” even though that’s not in the law. As Fried notes, this language is straight out of the Tea Party guerrilla manual that was written during the battle to prevent Obamacare from becoming law in the first place.
All of which is to say that the law’s proponents were badly caught off guard by the depth of the conservative bloc’s apparent hostility towards the law and its willingness to embrace the hard right’s arguments against its constitutionality. They didn’t anticipate that this could shape up as an ideological death struggle over the heart and soul of the Obama presidency, which, as E.J. Dionne notes today, is exactly what it has become.
By Greg Sargent | 11:10 AM ET, 03/29/2012
Washington Post
Another angle of the law is that insurers can no longer deny people insurance for pre-existing conditions. The inability to deny people with pre-existing conditions is only economically feasible if you have the mandate, since otherwise people just don’t buy insurance until they get sick, and then sign up as soon as they do, turning the whole idea of insurance on its head.
An Obamacare without the mandate is horrible for insurers who end up getting a lot of people as customers who only exploit the system.
Well anyway, yesterday Obama had another bad day in court, suggesting that if the Supreme Court tosses out the individual mandate, they’ll also toss out the rest of the law, meaning insurers won’t have to take on people with pre-existing conditions.
So investors are buying up these stocks, because the nightmare scenario of having to accept customers with pre-existing conditions but not having the mandate may be off the table.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/healthcare-stocks-are-surging-2012-3#ixzz1qXCkTyYc
Swarthmore mom, knowing those wiley ol coots, they will profit in any environment.
No need to give em a captive audience. To say that corporations don’t want all those captive payers would be akin to the right wing argument that the more you tighten your belt, the fatter you get. I don’t think so…
Look, I understand and respect your point of view: Better go for some good that can be expanded on later than nothing at all. (I realize that summary is a bit presumptuous of me — let’s say that it doesn’t completely contradict your view point)
You also understand my position (you have indicated as much) that at a certain point in the process of “compromise”, the give-aways reach structural limits that preclude the possibility of future expansion or good. And frankly, given subsequent events, I think Obama’s intention was to start the whole process so far to the right not that Republicans would accept it, but rather so that liberals would be left completely high and dry with nothing to say or get upset about. The plan was for the “fuc*ing retards” to just stand there speechless.
The public option was exactly that point. When that was made to disappear so that no viable government oversight/regulation of the insurance companies was possible, we crossed the threshold of compromise into an area where the bill no longer had anything to do with health care and simply became a highly toxic give-a-way to private enterprise with the provisio that there would be enough initial goodies included to market the fiasco it to a highy gullible and miss-informed public.
Since all that went down, Obama and his administration have revealed themselves beyond any reasonable doubt to be right wing centrists (and that is on a sliding scale where Richard Nixon would be considerably to the left). This gives further strong indication that there is little or nothing intended in the bill that is or ever was for the purpose of being expanded upon or that will metemorphisise into a real health care program the way social security and Medicare did. Au contraire. The bill is so packed with loop-holes and structural weaknesses that the only thing that will stick is the individual mandate.
I live in Massachusetts and I have been simply blown away at how the insurance companies can get around any restrictions the state puts in front of them. I have to imagine that part of the reason for that is because the Romney care bill, actually better than the Obama one, was put together by someone who wanted to throw big business a bone not the people of his state (who he saw as a vast reservoir of personal gardeners and lawn keepers). The insurance companies are killing us. The state makes it incredibly difficult to actually “get” any relief or assistance unless you are flat flat broke or destitute. But at the same time, the last thing the state is doing is controlling prices. In spite of what the 250 thousand a year media fat cat pundits say, or the “responsible people” who make hundreds of thousand a year and have no worries about paying for health care, everything is not fine and I resent the state forcing its citizens to go bankrupt simply as a boon to private enterprise and as an utterly hypocritical means of sweeping the problem under the rug.. We can go bankrupt just fine with out the state speeding up the process with the fig leaf of “health care” to balm their conscience.
And that simple mandate, once made totally legitimate by the Supreme pack of fascists, will introduce a slide that will carry social security and Medicare in the not too distant future right down to the same fate; a mandate forcing citizens to purchase its own social safety programs from private enterprise with no centralized “independent” government control. Obama is already preparing the way by his Trojan horse of a “payroll tax holiday” which is in reality simply a means of de-funding the social safety net programs and preparing the media arena for constant blasts of “we have to privatize them as there is no more money bla bla bla”. And lo and behold, there will be no constitution issue because that was allready taken care of in 2012.
Finally, I have some friends with pre-existing conditions. I think I even have one myself. But they/we are not the only people in the country. To justify this travesty of a corporate give-a-way masquerading as a public program by the fact that these people will indeed have a short period of reprieve just isn’t enough, nor are the other categories of people who will be helped, no matter how heart-pulling their description when you compare their numbers to the number of people that will actually still be left out alltogether or the number of people that will end up with pure junk insurance that does nothing but sweep the problem under the rug.
And one of the worst things about this bill is that it is absolutely ready made for corruption and dismantling. It is wide open to Republican attacks of “whittling away” coverage and the few good things that remain every time they want to drag out a discussion on the deficit or on where they will get the funding for their next three simultaneous wars.
Brooklin bridge, i currently live in Texas which has the highest number of uninsured people and therefore much human suffering.. You live in the most liberal state and have access to Romneycare. These factors might color our outlooks.
I do not have access to Romney care. All I have is a requirement that I pay insurance companies a fortune that I simply can’t afford. That’s all I have and the insurnce companies know it.
@Swarthmore: I doubt that scenario would hold up in court (buy insurance when you get sick).
It is routine in insurance to have a waiting period after insurance is bought before benefits kick in. I have seen, for example, a three month wait on life insurance and home appliance insurance. I recall a job at some point where my health insurance did not kick in until after my probationary period (90 days). Few people that are sick can wait three months, and although an insurance company may not be able to refuse to sell somebody because they have a pre-existing condition, that is NOT the same thing as having to pay for a diagnosis already made or a cancer already in progress. Coverage can be limited to health conditions that arise AFTER the probationary period.
For example, a friend of mine has a serious arthritic problem with his knees, due to an accident as a teenager when he landed on them. He has been denied health insurance because of this pre-existing condition. In his own research on the topic, he thinks he will be able to get coverage under Obamacare in a few years, but the insurance company can still exclude coverage for his knees, it just cannot refuse to sell him any health insurance at all. Which he thinks would be better than what he has now, if he got in a car accident or contracted an illness, but they won’t pay for his knee treatments.
All this amounts to is an exercise in getting the sheeple acclamated to having their meager resources raided on a regular basis and at will by private corporations. It’s a little extra jab that our taxes go to enforcing that form of economic terrorism.
Cue The Ads: GOP Votes To Scrap Medicare In Election Year
Sahil Kapur March 29, 2012, 4:44 PM 7 0
Recklessly brave or politically suicidal?
For the second year in a row, Republicans voted Thursday to effectively dismantle Medicare — this time, just over seven months before a presidential election. And Democrats are salivating at the political opportunity, eager to hang the vote around the neck of the party’s presidential nominee and its candidates in tough congressional races.
“A year ago, nobody was talking about Democrats having a shot at the House. Now we’re talking about it,” a Democratic leadership aide told TPM after the vote.
The blueprint by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan is similar to his controversial Medicare plan last year, in that it ends the health insurance guarantee for seniors and replaces the program with a subsidized insurance-exchange system. Unlike last year’s plan, seniors can buy into traditional Medicare as a sort-of public option, and the vouchers it provides are more generous.
Conservative Republicans see the vote — a party-line 228-191 that didn’t win a single Democrat — as an opportunity to lay down their marker for the sort of sweeping reforms they hope to enact if they win the presidency. Ryan has urged his party’s presidential candidates to cast the election not as a referendum on President Obama but a choice between two competing visions for the nation’s future.
“Today we will pass our budget that proposes real, honest solutions to create a stronger economy and a more certain future for our country,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said on the floor. “Our budget takes bold steps that will get the fiscal house in order and will manage down the debt and deficit.”
As it turns out, Democrats would love to fight the battle on those terms. They’re expected to make Medicare a focal point of their election message, portraying Republicans as seeking to “break the Medicare guarantee” in order to fund large tax cuts for the rich.
“Our main focus will be on Medicare,” the Democratic aide said. “There’s clear evidence that seniors are very worried about what Republicans are doing with Medicare. And we want people to know that this is who they are in a nutshell. There’s no wiggle room for them.”
Mitt Romney, the likely Republicans presidential nominee, has indicated support for Ryan’s budget — his spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment after the vote. And the White House offered a preview of the contrast it hopes to draw.
“House Republicans today banded together to shower millionaires and billionaires with a massive tax cut,” spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement, “paid for by ending Medicare as we know it and making extremely deep cuts to critical programs needed to create jobs and strengthen the middle class.”
TPM
Boehner: Ryan budget ‘vision’ of what GOP would do if in control
By Pete Kasperowicz – 03/29/12 01:50 PM ET
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday afternoon that the budget proposal put forward by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is a “real vision” of how Republicans would govern if they had more control of Washington.
“So I applaud my colleagues,” he said of those who worked on the Ryan budget, “for the tough decisions they’ve made, to try to do the right thing for the country, to lay out a real vision of what we were to do if we get more control here in this town. It’s still a Democrat-run town.”
The republicans voted today to end medicare as we know. They have NO plans to extend it to all.
ooops.. Medicare as we know it
Swarthmore,
You are right that single payer wouldn’t pass through this Congress. The only way it will ever have a chance is to get there incrementally. Obamacare would have been just a start to get us to a place where people’s health actually matter more than corporations.
Justice Roberts’ Supreme Wrecking Crew
By: Scarecrow Thursday March 29, 2012 7:52 am
“The conservative movement has become not just intellectually bankrupt and incoherent; it’s a moral abomination, and unless and until they are understood to be a menace to a democratic republic — and voters respond accordingly — the nation will continue to resemble a wrecking yard run by juvenile delinquents.”
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2012/03/29/justice-roberts-supreme-wrecking-crew/#comments
“In 1799, South Carolina’s highest court held: “So cautiously does the law watch over all contracts, that it will not permit any to be binding but such as are made by persons perfectly free, and at full liberty to make or refuse such contracts. . . . Contracts to be binding must not be made under any restraint or fear of their persons, otherwise they are void.” Throughout the life of this nation it has been understood that for a contract to be valid, the parties to it must mutually assent to its terms — without duress.
In addition to duress, contracts are voidable for reasons of fraud upon, or the mistake or incapacity of, a party to the contract. This underscores the centrality of the concept of meaningful consent in contract law. To be meaningful, consent must be informed and must not be coerced. Under Obamacare, the government will compel individuals to enter into contractual relations with insurance companies under threat of penalty”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamacares-rewriting-of-contract-law/2012/03/23/gIQAVuFmWS_story.html
http://go.bloomberg.com/health-care-supreme-court/2012-03-29/gop-ad-uses-doctored-scotus-audio/
Will our current crop of corporate owned politicians, media, and judicial system:
A) Work on expanding the ACA to help citizens receive more health care?
or
B) Work on expanding the mandate to help corporations gouge out more of the citizens money?
If you choose A, I have a fabulous deal for you
If you choose B, you know why the Supreme Court will pass the mandate at the end of June after they soak as much theatrics out of it as they can.
The most effective way to reduce health care costs may be making health care for humans a capital crime, subject to summary execution of all humans who are in any way involved in providing health care to humans.
If there actually is a Gaia Principle at work in the world, I have been unable to find any evidence that it is not vigorously at work in reducing the cost of human health care to identically zero, by getting people to reduce their population to identically zero through teaching humans to totally embrace the ultimate defeating principle of escalating reciprocal retaliation.
Surely the non-existence of humanity, duly and diligently achieved via the manifestly evident human proclivity for implementing mutually, assuredly, totally annihilating belief systems into variants of purportedly constitutional law, when fully completed, will reduce human health care costs to whatever level people who hate humanity because they are unable to not hate themselves so earnestly seek, doing so by means of having first totally eradicated the whole of humanity?
More hatred, compounded by the hatred generated by revenge masquerading as justice, makes only more hatred and less actual justice.
Wherefore art Thou, O Hatred, Omnipotent Ruler of Adversarial Law?
@Ekeyra: Now there is something that you and I can definitely agree upon.
by getting people to reduce their population to identically zero
I thought we had already solved that problem by global warming, pollution, and profit-driven exhaustion of critical resources, caused, no doubt, by sun spots on mars.
Here is an excellant summary of what the Democrats did wrong prior to the indifidual mandate ever coming to the Supreme
JokeCourt.I would only add that Democrats are just as beholden to corporate America as Republicans. That is, actual health care is not always what they are concerned about either.
It remains my position that the statute, including the individual mandate, is a constitutional exercise of legislative authority. Although I have been unable to hear all of the oral arguments in their entirety, the bits and pieces I have heard are disturbing, but not for any reason relating to constitutional law. I acknowledge that I have never argued before the Supreme Court, but I have argued before state and federal appellate courts, and have generally walked away impressed with the quality of the analysis and the thoughtfulness of the questions posed by the panels. The oral argument excerpts I have heard this week, however, are more suggestive of partisan debate on the floor of the House than they are of judicial proceedings. Are we simply witnessing the expected consequences of an intentional politicization of the Court? Perhaps so. And if that is the case, the Court is doing further damage to its already tattered reputation as the guardian of constitutional integrity, regardless of the substance of the opinion it eventually issues.
Surprise, surprise…
Never fear, the mandate will fare far better than the fish it puts in a barrel. The justices have had their fun, but as all will see in June, they know damn well which side of the bread has butter on it.