Posted on 03/03/2020 7:51:23 AM PST by John W
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal case on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare, that could potentially invalidate the entire law.
On Dec. 15, 2018, a Texas judge ruled that Obamacare’s individual mandate was unconstitutional. Judge Reed O’Connor agreed with the plaintiffs who argued that the lack of a penalty invalidated the “individual mandate” provision of the law, and if that part of the law was now invalid, then the whole law was.
Democratic states and the House of Representatives appealed the decision, and the case made it all the way up to the Supreme Court in a case titled California v. Texas. If the conservative-majority justices find the individual mandate unconstitutional in the June 2021 ruling, that could mean all of the ACA is unconstitutional.
“There could be essentially total chaos,” Cynthia Cox, director for the Program on the Affordable Care Act at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Yahoo Finance. “There’s no replacement plan that is ready to go and so essentially what would happen next is possibly over a short period of time, or possibly immediately, we would start seeing the ACA being unwound. And the immediate effect would be that literally tens of millions of people could lose coverage and also even more people could have other changes to their coverage.”
“What [would] happen is we’re going to go back to a marketplace that we had before the ACA,” Gerald Kominski, a professor in health policy and management at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, told Yahoo Finance. “Roll back the clock 11 years. First of all, there are no longer subsidies for people to buy health insurance in exchanges. Exchanges go away.”
(Excerpt) Read more at currently.att.yahoo.com ...
“the outcome could bring ‘total chaos’”
Or it could bring lower healthcare costs and a better healthcare system after a year or so of people readjusting to new incentives and cost structures.
I know and I am being forced to sign up for Medicare that I don’t want when I turn 65.
My worry, too. Obie’s out of office but still capable of damaging, embarrassing leaks about the Chief Judge....and his adoption hijinks.
“So Roberts would have to rule against himself? Doubt it.”
He would not. The new lawsuit is based on the fact that Roberts held the ACA constitutional because it contained a mandate with a financial penalty. Roberts ruled the penalty was a tax and that under Congress taxing power, it was constitutional. Silly ruling.
But after his ruling, the financial penalty was eliminated. No penalty=no tax=unconstitutional. So he could hold the law unconstitutional with logic that is completely consistent with his previous ruling.
It may be that Roberts twists himself into another pretzel to hold the law constitutional. But he already cut off the rationale that it is a valid exercise of the Commerce Clause. So in that sense, he could rule against himself on the Commerce Clause dicta in NFIB v. Sibelius, were he to hold that the Commerce Clause validates the ACA.
Roberts will almost certainly be the deciding vote.
“First of all, there are no longer subsidies for people to buy health insurance in exchanges. Exchanges go away.”
Sounds good for starters.
And give DL to illegals.
I have ZERO faith in Roberts.. he invented out of whole cloth the justification to allow Obamacare, that not even Obama’s lawyers were arguing... He will help the liberals on the court invent some new reason to keep it....
We need at least 1 and preferably 2 more Constructionalists on the court.
Rule of Law
or
Rule of Men
These are the only two types of government in the history of mankind: Republic or Oligarchy (which has many names).
Lets see if we have Rule of Law.
Much depends on Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
True, but individuals nor employers were forced to buy insurance only approved by Obamacare. "You want to keep your doctor, you can keep your doctor." Until so many retired. The mandate fine (Robert's tax) was the biggest obscenity of that take over of 1/6th of our economy.
Again, this was the most egregious Fedgov intervention in the free marketplace I can remember. How the USSC justified an individual or company is forced to buy a government sanctioned product just dumbfounds me.
It always come back to that ambiguous "General Welfare" clause in the Constitution Preamble that the dem/socs use to buy "gimmedat" votes. If only the Founding Fathers could have seen how that clause would be corrupted.
Question: Not being a Constitutional lawyer, has there ever been a ruling that the Preamble to the Constitution is law?
Roberts and the other democrats who supported obamacare should be recused from this case. They helped destroy millions of jobs and wipe out savings etc.
However, I believe Roberts has been compromised or why else would he read a document that mandates a FINE and turn it into a TAX? I always found it curious that the IRS was never given the authority to enforce those who didn't pay the fine/tax. IIRC, it was written in the bill.
More importantly, why would he agree that a citizen or company MUST buy a product approved by the Fedgov?
Roberts will rescue it again.
OK. I guess your people in DC should've executed with a tad more analytical rigor behind their policy. Instead they half-assed everything.
You can see the incorrect use of certain words spread amongst liberals like a virus.
"... And the immediate effect would be that literally tens of millions ..."
The use of 'literally' where it doesn't belong is the latest mutation of the virus, which also includes 'kind of' ... 'sort of' ... 'just really' ... 'this' ... 'this notion that somehow' ... and many others. (Along with voice intonations, especially lately the raising of the sing song voice at the ends of sentences as if to say 'accept me please, don't challenge me, I submit my statement not as declaration but for the consideration of the group, I'm not REALLY saying it in a hard way. Also hence the use of 'kind of' and 'sort of' to soften-weasel-word practically every single thing they say.)
I thought 'literally' had been killed off as it's made a number of attempts at being a fake-intelligent filler word, but alas, it's making another comeback.
The fun thing about these liberal filler words is that:
Liberals are such followers. As Carville said of the beginning of his career, choosing which side to be on (I paraphrase) ... I chose democrats because they are easier to fool/lead/persuade - hence I could be more effective - better at my job.
The simple minded Roberts will act as a communist Democrat and support the Affordable Care Act.
Has "general welfare" ever been defined in a federal court? Never mind - that would take too much research.
They had to pass it to find out what was in it.
Considering Chief Justice Roberts’ former mental gymnastics on the subject, I expect that the Texas case will be overturned with Roberts writing the majority opinion. This case is probably the one thing keeping Ruth Bader Ginsberg hanging on all this time.
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