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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.
“Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’ Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.” If SCOTUS can twist these words what stops them from twisting ANY words?
A small part of me wanted to see this go down, just to watch the shitstorm that resulted and see the Republicans claim that it wasn't their fault.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If SCOTUS can twist these words what stops them from twisting ANY words?
Except that if "State", only means individual states, then many of the constitutional amendments - including the second - fall apart on the federal level.
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.
In correct. In other words. The law was clearly drafted with a given intent that the plaintifs want the court to ignore, however intent of the law is an important part of the SCOTUS's interpretation of all laws.
Not one Congressman has read the law in full — not before it was passed, not after. It is too long and too complicated.
Though it is acceptable for courts to turn to legislative intent sometimes, that's specifically reserved to cases, where the laws language is unclear.
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. Whether that was the intent of the law-makers or not is irrelevant. The court's decision is wrong.
What is written is not what is meant by intent, what is meant by intent is what the law was meant to accomplish. In this case if you remove all context from those few lines you can make it look like the intent was not to provide subsidies to these states (if you ignore that the word state has dual meaning in legislation), however when you look at the full bill, or heavens forbid, talk to the drafters of the law, you can see that the intent was to provide the credits either way.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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."
But the language of the law is clear. 'State'...
If that doesn't mean 'state' then the court has set precedent to let lower courts decide what laws mean.
And that is not how this nation is intended to work.
The revolution is winning.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If SCOTUS can twist these words what stops them from twisting ANY words?
Except that if "State", only means individual states, then many of the constitutional amendments - including the second - fall apart on the federal level.
That's why in laws (especially 2400 page monstrosities like this one) they have sections on Definitions to specifically say whether "State" means "50 States", "50 States + US Territories like Puerto Rico", or "50 States + Territories + District of Columbia", etc.
In this case, the law was originally drafted to deal with State-level exchanges. A Federal exchange was an afterthought one they didn't expect/hope would be used. (And according to Gruber, was intentionally left out of this clause.) Whatever the case, the courts should be rewriting when it's a clear cut, cut-and-dried case of an error. As long as there's a plausible rationale for why the text is the way it is ("To discourage States from relying on the Federal exchange, at the cost of the Federal funding that we'd otherwise be giving to the citizens of that State to help with the insurance fee we're forcing them to pay"), we should be relying on the text.
Typos can indeed lead to ludicrous conclusions that can be corrected judicially. This was not one of them.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
It's a basic principle of statutory interpretation that legislatures define laws by their written text. If the text is vague, you can fill in the blanks by guessing at the intent, but if the text is clear, the text is the meaning of the statute. Since legislation is usually the product of intense horse trading, statutes rarely have any sort of coherent intent and they are often full of contradictions.
That being said, that wasn't the case here. The statute was plainly worded and the whole "only states that set up exhcanges get subsidies" mechanism was bragged about for the first two years after it was signed into law. They only changed their tune when they realized that the structure collapsed if you take away the subsidies (which also control the mandates, etc).
Bascially, the administration asked for Chevron deference, which means "the statute is so vague, we have no idea what it means, so the IRS can make a rule that is directly the opposite of the text". Even this was a stretch.
The supreme court turned around and rewrote the statute for them, saying "the statute isn't vague, it means exactly the opposite of what it says, there's no need for the IRS to even do anything or pretend to need Chevron deference."
Viewing these words as a mistake is the simplest interpretation of the law. The other option is to re-interpret lots of other sections, and change the law to be at odds with how the people writing it meant for it to be interpreted.
The writers of the law clearly wanted to establish state exchanges for any state that wanted them, and a federal exchange for any state that didn't want to roll its own, and that all of these exchanges do the same thing. This might not be apparent in that little snippet, but it's very much apparent in the text of the law itself.
It's not as though the SCOTUS majority is pulling meaning out of nowhere for just this passage. Quite the contrary, they'd have had to re-interpret a lot of text to infer that the law was written so as to exclude subsidies for the federal exchange.
The court doesn't need to twist anything. They use week established rules of construction. This is necessary because a single textual document will never convey every nuance.
"We begin with the familiar canon of statutory construction that the starting point for interpreting a statute is the language of the statute itself. Absent a clearly expressed legislative intention to the contrary, that language must ordinarily be regarded as conclusive.:" Consumer Product Safety Commission et al. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc. et al.,447 U.S. 102 (1980).
But the language of the statue has to be understood as a whole.
For example, noscitur a sociis ("a word is known by the company it keeps"):
When a word is ambiguous, its meaning may be determined by reference to the rest of the statute.
That's exactly what the Court did here, and is exactly what most reasonable humans do in establishing the meaning of any word or words.
Bullshit! Words need to have meanings and laws need to have concrete meanings to whatever degree is possible. Its the whole reasons things are struck down all the time as 'void for vagueness.'
If congress is allowed to retroactively decide what they intended, never mind what the wrote than we might has well go back to a monarchy and whatever the King thinks today goes. A system of laws is absolutely useless when anything can mean whatever government wants it mean. You and I just suffered a blow to any real protection any real possibility of justice. This is just one more example of turning the rule of law into a bad joke. The SCOTUS, POTUS, and Congress should be ashamed of themselves.
There is plenty of evidence in the form of Gruber to suggest that congress did indeed intend to write what they wrote to cajole states into compliance. Sates called their bluff and now congress gets a pass.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Both the intent and the bill are documented, the thought process is known...
Also you are stating the SCOTUS, the ultimate power in determining the law, is unreliable? And the fact that centuries of jurisprudence is based on this is not legal?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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.
The text is essentially a hunk of code describing how to execute the law.
The controversial section is a bug.
Do you think the courts should faithfully execute the buggy code, crashing part of the country in the process, or do you think they should fix or ignore the bug and allow the law to execute successfully?
Well, according to one of the law's architects, it was a Feature, not a Bug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34rttqLh12U&feature=youtu.be
So to answer your question: Yes.
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Except there's a definitions section to the law that defines the State as "one of the 50 states". But go ahead. Ignore that.
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.
Ultimately I believe that the court ruled incorrectly here. The way this should have been handled is that the court should have ruled based on the law as written. The thing is, if our political system wasn't so messed up it would have never reached the supreme court. Congress would have simply fixed the law itself to clarify the actual intent and life would have gone on. Although it is pretty clear what the intent was in this circumstance I think it is dangerous to allow for that broad of discretion for the judicial branch.
... I'm not a fan of Obamacare. In fact, that's putting it lightly. However, I think the court got it right on this one. Trying to get a part of the law thrown out on a technicality in an effort to get the law to implode on itself and hurt the American people is not the right way to get the law repealed.
The way to get the law repealed is for Congress to repeal it. If they don't have the majority yet to do it, then we need to win people (and seats in Congress) over to our side.
Note: my criticism does not not apply to the earlier challenge which, while perhaps weaker, was more legitimate in questioning the legality of the law on constitutional grounds. This challenge amounted to "nuh uh because you wrote State but you should have written State or Federal, hah!" Be glad you don't live in a world where courts always rule strictly on literal interpretations. That would be a really, really shitty world.
"The other option is to re-interpret lots of other sections, and change the law to be at odds with how the people writing it meant for it to be interpreted"
I think I read that book in high-school. Wasn't it called 1984?
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.
The actual architect of the law, as well as some other people involved with the writing, specifically stated at the time the law was being written that the purpose of the tax credit only applying to State exchanges was to force uncooperative states to comply with the law.
There are several videos of full speeches by Gruber where he clearly spells out that that was the intent of the law and why there is no mention of the Federal exchange and credits. It's also why this law specifically defines State exchange as an exchange established by one of the 50 states or a US territories (although Obamacare had issues with territories too).
This was not about fixing a mistake in a law but re-writing it and ignoring it's clear intent to prevent it from falling apart.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
The intent matters just as much as the plain language. Scalia himself has defended that intent matters more than plain language multiple times including pulling out 300 year old dictionaries. The affirming verdict itself quotes Scalia from the last ruling where he completely contradicts what he claims in this dissent. He's an inconsistent little troll, he rules whatever he wants, not what the constitution requires.
The writers of the law clearly wanted to establish state exchanges for any state that wanted them, and a federal exchange for any state that didn't want to roll its own, and that all of these exchanges do the same thing.
Johnathan Gruber didn't seem to think so. He bragged that the idea was to intimidate conservative states into exchanges by withholding subsidies from citizens of states which declined to create them.
"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."
Actually, Judicial Review is NOT in the Constitution. But when it happened it was accepted and so it is now enshrined.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The act uses the term "the state", not "a state". The opinion of authors was that if they had a chance to rewrite it, they'd make it clear "the state" referred to the federal government. Scalia himself has reasoned cases on Congressional acts that said the entire act must be looked at to get the meaning of the terms. He cannot very well turn around now and claim the narrow interpretation he wants simply because he doesn't like the act.
obamacare is obviously grotesque
but what it does is plainly acknowledge that american healthcare is an grossly inefficient piece of shit. our system is insanely expensive and people avoid basic healthcare. because of the misguided notion that capitalism has anything to do with a basic right. there is no competition in healthcare, it is a *natural monopoly* (look it up, retards). all we will ever get in the system that makes believe there is competition, because free market fairies and unicorns, is rent seeking parasites funneling money off for no added benefit, and paying congresscritters top keep it that way. and of course propagandized fox news morons believing the scaremongering ignorance that they shovel out should we try to get a better system
all of our social and economic peers spend A TENTH OR LESS WHAT WE SPEND, AND HAVE FAR BETTER HEALTH OUTCOMES. ask any canadian, british, french, german, japanese, australian: our system scares the hell out of them, they shake their heads in horror at what americans have to put up with. it's not about "freedom" unless you wish to be free from quality low cost healthcare (if you don't want to buy health insurance, you're basically saying you want to be a freeloader and avoid your bill... an irresponsible ignorant douchebag, not a freedom fighter)
republicans kick and scream. and offer nothing better
because they don't want to admit that they are ideologically bankrupt on the question. instead of admitting they are wrong, they have no problem with americans having extremely expensive, shoddy healthcare, and dying too early and broke. there's your "death panels": lower middle class? fuck you, go bankrupt and die
again, obamacare is horribly imperfect, but it's the first step and a basic acknowledgment of how broken our system is
and now we must take the other 1,000 steps we need to take to reach single payer universal healthcare, the only fucking answer that makes any fucking sense on the subject of a functional healthcare system
i'm sorry so many americans are so fucking stupid and ideologically blinded that they would rather have extremely expensive healthcare or just plain die, rather taen understand or admit the fucking obvious. but you morons won't hold us back from what is obvious to anyone moderately intelligent on the topic and not propagandized by right leaning media lies
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"The act uses the term "the state", not "a state". "
Maybe elsewhere, but not in the context that was being litigated: "established by a State".
This claim doesn't align with the facts. The original ACA had no state exchanges - those were injected by Republicans late in the process. And even then, the assumption was that few states would choose to physically build their own exchanges, and almost all states would choose to operate their exchanges on the federal infrastructure, because that would be vastly less work/cost/risk. There was no discussion at the time of states losing subsidies based on running on state vs federal infrastructure. In fact, Republicans at the time all assumed that all states received subsidies whether they ran on the federal infrastructure or built their own. The idea that state exchanges run on the federal infrastructure wouldn't get subsidies was invented years after the fact.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
As long as there's a plausible rationale for why the text is the way it is ...
The reason the text is the way it is, is because of the election of Scott Brown to fill the seat of the recently deceased Ted Kennedy. The Democrats lost their 60 seat super-majority required to override a filibuster. So congress had to pass the bill "as is" with no changes or edits. It was either a flawed law or no law.
Regardless, I'm pretty sure they passed it without reading it. And not because, say, they wouldn't have passed it if they did; rather, because the bill as a whole is entirely unreadable.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
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.
Uh, unless things have changed around here, Congress IS the Legislative branch of the US Federal government.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Yet, of those 16 that did create exchanges, more than half have failed to work or have gone over budget, after wasting more than $4 billion in federal funds. On top of that, three are now under investigation.
Gosh, corruption in government! You are shocked, shocked! Maybe we should eliminate every part of government that wastes money! Can we start with the DOD? But NO, you want to start on the part that keeps people healthy.
Repeal the 17th amendment. At least you would have one house that isn't campaigning all the type.
IMO, the 17th broke a fundamental safeguard of our republic.
I find it interesting that the principles of the affordable care act were almost entirely conceived of and proposed by the Republican part back in the 90s in response to the Clinton health care reform initiative which failed. And no matter what they claim, a Republican administration in Mass (Romney) largely implemented much of the ACA on a state level and it worked very well indeed. Why it would suddenly become so repulsive to Republicans I do not know.
During the time of the passage of the ACA, my coworker, who was going through cancer treatment and other health issues read the bill in its entirety and he felt it was not at all perfect but it was better than what we had. A lot of the FUD going around (still is) was just that. He was comfortable with the bill as passed, even if the majority of congress critters seemed to not be familiar with it. I'm glad the supreme court upheld it. It the Republicrats want to get rid of it, they need to do it the proper way, and replace it with something better. No, going back to the status quo will not work. If they would propose a better, more equitable plan, I would support it. But so far they seem to be offering absolutely nothing. If they manage to get the White House, it will be over a campaign promise to roll things back to the good old days and then do absolutely nothing. The last part sounds good actually.
During the FUD and absolute crap going around during the passage of the ACA, many people talked about socialized systems in other countries (who was it that said they'd move to Canada to get away from the ACA?). The irony of all that is that between the VA, Medicare, and Medicaid, the US gov't runs the largest socialized healthcare system in the world. And it's one of the most expensive. Maybe the gov't should merge them all together into one program, and then require all federal employees, including elected officials and the president and all his advisors to use it as their primary health care insurance provider and system. You can bet all the problems would clear up in a a matter of months! And it just might end up being a really good program.
Most of the comments here seem to be saying that the case was decided incorrectly because the text of the law was clear and the intent doesn't matter. However, there are lots of other cases where the text of the law is equally clear and yet SCOTUS has ruled that intent matters. Let's start with the First Amendment. It's obvious that slander laws run afoul of the plain text of the First Amendment. Which part of "Congress shall make no law..." is unclear? None at all. Yet SCOTUS has ruled slander laws are allowed, as well as laws preventing inciting a riot (e.g., yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater).
For another example near and dear to conservatives' hearts, consider the Second Amendment. The Roberts court has ruled (District of Columbia vs. Heller, 2008) that the Second Amendment establishes an individual right to carry arms, despite the fact the amendment only mentions carrying arms in the context of a militia.
With the current case, the intent of the law was clear (and most of the drafters are still around to ask), so that's what SCOTUS used. Judges aren't just implementations of parsing algorithms that spit out yes or no results based on the text of the laws.
No but having only taxpayers able to vote would likely be a good idea.
Typos can indeed lead to ludicrous conclusions that can be corrected judicially. This was not one of them.
Apparently, six justices disagree with you...
But if six judges disagreed with you, and they happened to rule against your favored political party, would you placidly accept their decision?
Yes. That's how this works. Part of the function of the Supreme Court is to do what *they* interpret as correct WRT to the law and Constitution, not the most popular or the wishes of the masses or majority.
Congress is free to amend or write a new law - but if they weren't spoiled, selfish children, they would have done that already. They could have easily clarified this, but didn't because Republicans would have used the opportunity to destroy the ACA rather than helping to make it even a little better -- especially important in light of the *fact* that the Republicans have no alternative to the ACA, except to get rid of it. Don't know why they don't want to keep the poor and middle class from getting health insurance...
The person who brought this particular suit is special kind of asshole as he has admitted he has no personal standing as he is already eligible for VA or Medicare coverage - so nice for them to have *his* Universal Healthcare Coverage taken care of...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This ruling is actually very good for individual freedom. I'm happy to see that the supreme court made an intelligent ruling. I'm 54 and semi-retired. I have pre-existing conditions and if we went back to the way things used to work, I'd have to become employed full time again, or emigrate to the UK where I also
have citizenship.
I hate everything American employment stands for. Age discrimination, employment-at-will, invention agreements, covenants not to compete, and binding arbitration to name a few.