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Supreme Court Upholds Key Obamacare Subsidies
HughPickens.com writes: Retuers reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6 — 3 in favor of the nationwide availability of tax subsidies that are crucial to the implementation of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, handing a major victory to the president. It marked the second time in three years that the high court ruled against a major challenge to the law brought by conservatives seeking to gut it.
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," wrote Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion (PDF). He added that nationwide availability of the credits is required to "avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid." The ruling will come as a major relief to Obama as he seeks to ensure that his legacy legislative achievement is implemented effectively and survives political and legal attacks before he leaves office in early 2017. Justice Antonin Scalia took the relatively rare step of reading a summary of his dissenting opinion from the bench. "We really should start calling the law SCOTUScare," said Scalia referencing the court's earlier decision upholding the constitutionality of the law.
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," wrote Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion (PDF). He added that nationwide availability of the credits is required to "avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid." The ruling will come as a major relief to Obama as he seeks to ensure that his legacy legislative achievement is implemented effectively and survives political and legal attacks before he leaves office in early 2017. Justice Antonin Scalia took the relatively rare step of reading a summary of his dissenting opinion from the bench. "We really should start calling the law SCOTUScare," said Scalia referencing the court's earlier decision upholding the constitutionality of the law.
That is of course quite absurd, and the Court's 21 pages of explanation make it no less so.
You would think the answer would be obviousâ"so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it.
I particularly enjoy seeing him jump on the conspiracy bandwagon with this tasty morsel:
But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.
(Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Afford- able Care Act!)
This little circular snippet is fun as well:
Who would ever have dreamt that âoeExchange established by the Stateâ means âoeExchange established by the State or the Federal Government â?
Considering he is a known fan of constitutional amendments where "state" means "federal government". Of course, here it doesn't matter because .... well, whatever.
The Court's next bit of interpretive jiggery-pokery
For its next defense of the indefensible
Well, it is good to know that he clearly didn't have any strong opinions on the matter before the case made it to the bench. After all, a predetermined judiciary is what justice is all about in this country, is it not? I would say that he was posturing himself for a new career with Fox News, but there is no good reason for him to do that, being as he already has a job for life.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In other words, the majority's decision was based not on the law itself, but on its effects and/or would-be effects.
Yes. In the real world SCOTUS looks closely at what impact their decision will have. "not based on the law itself" is a ridiculous criticism--they are being *asked* what the law is, and part of deciding what the law is when there is any ambiguity or potentially counterintuitive result is to figure out what are the consequences if the law is way X vs. way Y.
That's why SCOTUS often considers "administrability" when they are making decisions. It's a fundamental part of how the court operates. Would you rather they kill people Congress didn't intend to kill or that they say "this is a typo and in the context of what you are doing, it's pretty damn clear you would have intended this to mean X if you had bothered to read the law you wrote."
There is zero ambiguity here in terms of what Congress intended; it's clear that a law was poorly drafted. This is a not a maybe-they-meant-Y situation, this is a "hey, they accidentally used a sentence that probably says Y."
the Federal Government will establish “such Exchange” if the State does not
that tax credits “shall be allowed” for any “applicable taxpayer,”26 U. S. C. 36B(a), but only if the taxpayer has enrolled in an insurance plan through “an Exchange established by the State under [42 U. S. C. 18031],”
Anyone fluent in English understands that this means the Federal Government can create exchanges.
That was not the case here — as written, the law clearly only allows subsidies for residents of those states, that have set up "health exchanges" of their own.
That's simply not true. There is ONE SINGLE CLAUSE TAKEN IN ISOLATION WHICH SAYS "ESTABLISHED BY THE STATE", but there are other clauses which clearly spell out in more detail the requirements of the exchanges and the relationship between state and federal, but the nutjob right-wing desperadoes who have failed in every other attempt to overturn ACA chose to pin their hopes on SCOTUS taking a single clause out of context...
No, it is a twisted interpretation of the law. "The state" is used seven times in the law and this is the only instance where the court has decided it must mean the sate and the federal government.
"the courts should be rewriting "
And thus harkens the downfall of the Republic. Hyperbole? Perhaps... and I hope. I have my fears.
The job of the federal courts is not to re-write law but to affirm or strike down laws which are or are not Constitutional.
It's the job of Congress to write (and maybe re-write when necessary) laws. If a law fell short the first time through it should *NOT* be the job of the courts to fill in the gaps.
Unfortunately, Congress is ceding power to both the Executive and Legislative that can only weaken our rights and liberty. They are becoming less and less relevant.
It's a basic principle of statutory interpretation that legislatures define laws by their written text.
LMFTY: It's one basic principle in English Jurisprudence, known in legal circles as "the plain meaning rule". The other two are: "the golden rule" and "the mischief rule".
The golden rule allows a judge to depart from a word's normal meaning in order to avoid an absurd result.
The mischief rule sets the court to determine the "mischief and defect" that the statute in question has set out to remedy, and what ruling would effectively implement this remedy.
When America was founded those three principles were firmly in place. Over the years the courts and the laws themselves have been moving away from that tradition, creating the (in)famous loopholes that are the bread and butter of corporate law practice.
It has no business at the federal level due to the 10th amendment.
Republicans had absolutely zero control of this bill or they would have stopped it from passing. Democrats had an iron grip on congress with majorities in both the House and Senate, they could literally pass ANY law they wished with any content they wanted. Literally all the Republicans could do is stand in front of the TV cameras and complain about it, unless they could peal off enough democrat votes to stop something, the democrats had free reign to do anything and pass anything they wanted. This was true for the first part of Obama's first term, until Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat was filled in the special election by a republican, at which point, all the republicans could really do was block cloture and stop something. Still the democrats could still make a rule change (the nuclear option) and get *anything* they wished though congress and to the president until the midterms.
You are blaming the wrong group here...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
He cannot very well turn around now and claim the narrow interpretation he wants simply because he doesn't like the act.
Well, he can because he did. But doing so exposes his fundamental intellectual dishonesty.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
you don't shop for care when you're having a heart attack or you have a broken arm or any emergency
you don't shop around for an oncologist when you have cancer (not that you don't have the time, you lack the knowledge to make an educate choice)
all you have done is enunciate related topics like doctor supply that does not disprove the fucking actual topic: healthcare is a natural monopoly. you need a hospital to cover a given area, and you don't shop around for various hospitals when you need emergency or knowledgeable care
please understand the fucking basic facts of a topic then open your ignorant mouth
or shut up, because you don't matter. all of our social and economic peers and even most countries less developed than us understand that healthcare has to be single payer. and they all spend far less than us and have higher quality care. so it doesn't matter what you think or what you say, history has passed you by, and we will drag the retarded propagandized wing of americans into the realm of common sense, and they will live longer and spend less on healthcare in spite of their abject ignorance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it