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Supreme Court: Affordable Care Act Is Constitutional
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. The health insurance mandate, also known as "Obamacare" was found to be "permissible under Congress's taxing authority." The full ruling (PDF) is now available, and the court's opinion begins on page 7. Amy Howe from SCOTUSblog summarized the ruling thus:
"The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding."
Further coverage is available from CNN, the NY Times, and Fox.
It took a lot of political capital to even get this passed. The public option was removed to make it passable.
The individual mandate was designed (by Republican think tanks) to avoid freeloaders, who we've all been paying for when they show up in the emergency room.
I also have insurance and the 2 big things it does for me are that it'll be tougher for an insurance company to deny benefits based on a pre-existing condition (which has been interpreted ludicrously loosely at times) and that if I (or someone close to me) ever does have huge medical bills, it will be less likely to bankrupt me.
Nobody had to. According to Roberts, it is the court's duty to seek out and find any possible angle to keep a law constitutional. If it fails by one interpretation, use another. Only if everything fails is it struck down.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
It's a new tax to cover the healthcare costs of those who end up in the hospital without insurance.
You can get a tax break for having your own insurance, as proof that you won't be costing taxpayers anything when you end up defaulting on $200k of hospital bills after an accident.
I don't know why the democrats couldn't shape the message that way. That's really what it is, and sounds better than "pay up or pay up".
The majority of the country didn't want this legislation.
Yeah, funny thing about that.
When people were polled about specific parts OF the bill, with the exception of the mandate, everything had a solid majority of support.
Of course, the mandate is the keystone that pays for the rest of the parts people like.
So, all that really proves is people want the great taste WITH less filling, which isn't how economics works.
It's more of a pudding after meat situation.
Odds are your taxes will go up to support enforcing this program, as will your health insurance costs as they struggle to compete with it.
Insurance rates will likely go up LESS fast since those WITH health insurance have ALWAYS been paying for those WITHOUT. Now we will no longer have to do that in many cases. Of course, healthcare and insurance being what they are, insurance will still go up, just not as fast.
At this point most of the law has already been priced in insurance anyway.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
I got MY healthcare.
You and your family can take a FLYING LEAP.
The most selfish American generation says SCREW YOU!!
Thanks for sharing the GOP platform on this.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
The majority of the country didn't want this legislation. It was voted down in congress and they had to resort to some trick to pass it.
Uhhhh...
1) The majority of the country has no idea what's even in the bill. Vast majorities of America (even conservatives) support its provisions, however. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/06/26/poll-republicans-hate-obamacare-but-like-most-of-what-it-does/
2) Congress passed the law with a majority vote. And now it's been proven constitutional. Do you have a suggestion how to make laws more democratically?
have been for decades
when someone uninsured shows up at the hospital with a broken arm, then avoids the bill or declares bankrupcty, we bail out the hospital from bankrupcty and you pay the bill
the only thing that has changed is that irresponsible people, people who think freedom means not to taking responsible for their healthcare, now have to do that, and stop freeloading off of us
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually, there's a lot of opposition to the healthcare reform. The right oppose it for ideological reasons, and many on the left because it falls too far short of the universal health care that any civilized country should have.
Interestingly, the right's opposition is purely an ideological objection to "Obamacare". Opposition is 56% to 44% BUT if you ask about the different pieces (Reuters-Ipsos poll), 80% of Rebublicans favor creating "insurance pools", 52% favor letting kids stay on their parent's healthcare until age 26, 78% favor banning insurance from denying coverage for "pre-existing" conditions and 82% favor banning insurance companies from dropping sick people. The numbers are, of course, much higher amongst independents/democrats.
So, the right wing objects to Obamacare while favoring all the major provisions.
This is about taxes. "General welfare" or "regulation of interstate commerce" (which was rejected) don't apply. If congress wants to tax people who don't enter into a business agreement with a third party, they can (and, did).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Meanwhile, everyone ignored the actual universal healthcare bill that would have paid for itself, not with a fundamental, constitutionally questionable mandate / giveaway to insurance companies, but, shock and appall, a tax. Can't have that! Let's just force people to pay for it directly, except that they have to buy it from private insurance companies who can still dictate their care or lack thereof. It's not a tax if the forced payment of money doesn't go to the government!
But I'm not bitter. Not at all.
When this blows up in everyone's faces in a couple of presidencies (you know, after insurance premiums shoot through the roof and price fixing is commonplace), don't say I didn't say I told you so.
The really annoying thing to me is that this is still probably the closest Obama could have got to universal care in the current political climate. I don't even really blame him.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It's cheaper for my employer to drop my insurance *now* and pay *zero* tax, but they haven't because they use it as an incentive to keep me around. Your argument is a completely moot point.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
1. Congress has the right to force citizens to enter into commerce, under the commerce clause -- the mandate penalty was just that, a penalty.
2. Congress has the right to tax any behavior it sees fit -- the mandate penalty was, for this purpose, a tax.
SCOTUS rejected the first claim (proving that they do see limits to the commerce clause sometimes), and accepted the second claim. SCOTUS did not create the idea that it was the mandate was a new tax -- the government did.
Actually, Obama's lawyers told the Court that, firstly, it was not a tax but a valid use of the government's Commerce-Clause powers. Then they outlined two alternative arguments:
Alternative A: Even if the Court finds it was not within the scope of the Commerce Clause, the ACA is nonetheless Constitutional under the Necessary and Proper clause, because the insurance mandate is both necessary and proper to enacting Congress's reform scheme.
Alternative B: Even if the Court finds it is neither within the scope of the CC or the N&P clause, the ACA should nonetheless be upheld because it is functionally equivalent to a tax, and if treated as a tax, is within Congress's powers under the Tax Clause.
The Court rejected Obama's lawyers' primary and Alternative A arguments, but accepted Alternative B. This is fairly common in legal cases. You first say what you think is true, but then you go through several alternatives that argue that, even if the Court disagrees with you in some way, you should nonetheless win for several backup reasons.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Holy cripes, man! "...money you never had?!?" It was money that was forcibly removed from you before you ever saw it!
Like the man said, it is money he never had.
Add up that missing 1/3 from your paycheck. What could you do with that?
If he could somehow evade paying taxes, his lifestyle would improve. If everybody else could do it too, his lifestyle would get much worse. Any furthur questions?
"that's precisely what this law is: a government mandated fee (NOT a tax, that's also BS) for simply being alive."
Yes, it's a fee. It's a fee for a financial risk-mitigating service. It's also a fee I've been paying (in the form of higher premiums) for people who want to be alive and not pay their own bills for the services (in the emergency room, of all places) of people who keep them alive, working, having bratty kids, etc. It's also a fee that I've been paying for people who don't have the good sense to get regular medical checkups and screenings at a clinic pr Dr's office when they're well, so that their chronic diseases can be managed such that they don't have to go to the emergency room and be admitted to treat conditions that could have been prevented or controlled.
As it happens, I pay other fees for other people to be alive (for water treatment and sewer service, for public schools, for bridges and infrastructure, for firefighting coverage), but I get to share in those benefits, too, so these are fees that I pay in the form of taxes, because the good is public.
I'm quite tired of having me and every other insured person having to foot the bill so that libertarians and objectivists can enjoy some kind of idealistic existence.
I met a guy, a guy who owned his own construction business, who refused to get health insurance. He always went to the ER when he was sick, and only when he was very sick or injured. Never paid a single medical bill. He had a really nice power boat -- a big cabin cruiser. I asked him why he didn't buy insurance and he said that he could not afford to carry it for his company, and that even if he could afford it, he had concluded that he would only end up paying more than he would get out of it, should he have to rely on it. If he was deathly sick or fatally injured, nobody was going to be able to make him pay when he was dead. He said that by not paying a bill he didn't have to pay it permitted him more money to do things he liked -- like his boat. I said, "so, because I pay my insurance, you got free health care and also that boat." and he looked me straight in the eye and said "yeah, exactly".
Now that guy has to pay -=something=-, and I feel a little better about having to share air with him.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Citation: my daughter was on a field trip some where in the U.K., got hurt. Friends took her to the local hospital. They patched her up, no charge. I'm telling her she's not a charity case, pay the going rate. Daughter, while still on the phone, asks doctor, "Can you put my dad on some kind of medication, so he'll calm down?" I hate it when my daughter has more common sense than I do.