Posted on 03/10/2017 6:58:05 AM PST by pgkdan
My expectation is whatever is passed will be SNAFU. They will declare victory and give some people that buy their own insurance some modest relief and undo some of the more outrageous aspects of Obamacare.
What passed when?? It’s three parts, which part are you talking about?
When the final product is passed.
This is not health care reform. Nor is it insurance reform. It is government program reform.
That is unlikely to happen. Do you think a Congress person is going to vote to raise their own taxes?
I agree it is unlikely to happen—and I agree that Congress goes for even the small-bore financial gains for itself when it sees the opportunity.
That determination was not his to make.
Even the gov’t argued before him that it was not a tax. He chose to make his own findings not based on the law.
None of the above?
Your representation of what happened there is misleading — maybe unintentionally. The government may have claimed that it wasn’t a tax in its oral arguments, but by that time they had already submitted hundreds of pages of written briefs that argued many other — often contradictory — points. It’s a tax, it’s not a tax, it might be a tax, it doesnt matter if it’s a tax, etc. You can’t look at the oral arguments as if they are the sum total of all the evidence considered by the court.
Oh goody congress promising to do something later if we just do this now.,.that has always worked out so well in the past....
It IS a hot mess
It would also cause a firestorm with workers that get the break. In the past, my employer periodically relayed how much my coverage was worth. They just make an educated guess because they are self insured. It was a group price figure and not based on age. I think it was the Cobra cost. If they would have taxed me on that it would have the royal shaft in my younger days. For a family of 4 in the 25% tax bracket, it would be a ~$7.5K tax increase today.
https://www.scribd.com/document/98542275/Scotus-opinion
See page 17 et al.
Roberts inverted logic and twisted himself into a pretzel to call the penalty a tax because he thought it should be one.
Scalia in dissent which should have been the majority opinion skewered that idea.
All water under the bridge now...but its a tax because Roberts said so.
To be fair then, Employee Insurance Plans must all be paid for with after tax $
The benefit amount must be stated on a new 1099 HI that must be treated as income on the 1040.
That is what it should be, a tax deduction.
It was “forbidden” to be collected like a tax. They could not garnish for it they could not penalize you for not paying it...it was not to be considered a tax.
Until Roberts said it was.
Even Ginsburg in her ruling used the commerce clause as justification to rule the law constitutional. She said that yes the government could compel you to act because you would eventually act[need healthcare] and this was too important. Words to that effect. [Scalia said that was analogous to saying you might one day buy another car: the government cannot compel you to do so right now.]
His dissent was masterful..
It was "forbidden" to be collected like a tax. They could not garnish for it they could not penalize you for not paying it...it was not to be considered a tax.
The U.S. Supreme Court didn't forbid anything. That's the way the statute was written ... which was just one of many incoherent, idiotic things the law contained.
Thats correct: the SCOTUS did not forbid anything. The SCOTUS said it was a tax after the law went out of it way to say it wasn’t.
Poorly written, yes. But that was one of the arguments: it wasn’t called a tax so it wasn’t: the law laid out defined taxes and the mandate penalty as not one of them. Roberts saw fit to say it was and then ruled it legal.
Near as I can recall and I am not a legal eagle, that is why this mess is still with us today.
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