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Supreme Court Upholds Obama Health Care Subsidies[W:700]

What matters is the language of the law, and in drafting ACA they all failed to take their "floor time" speaking and apply it to the actual language used. The government should have lost the case forcing the remedy to be in Congress, which is how this is supposed to work. The Supreme Court is not supposed to be crafting the law for where Congress failed.

They didn't craft the law. They ruled that the law, though not clear in this instance, should be enforced in the way that it was clearly intended to be enforced by the people that passed it.

The courts rule on the intent of the law all the time.
 
The problem I have with all of this is that it is not something that was written years and years ago, it is a new piece of legislation and they could have written "federal" in there just as easily as the wrote "state". They didn't.
Words don't matter anymore? Thanks, SCOTUS, you suck.

The language that you are referencing is four words out of a 900 page bill. Such minor mistakes in the language are extremely common and, in any other ordinary political climate, such a mistake would have been fixed as a rather routine practice. But given the Republican's antithesis to any remote resemblance of an attempt to work with the President on this issue (or nearly any other issue before the Trade Agreement), such a fix had to wait until it got all the way to the Supreme Court.
 
Anthony60 said:
I just heard a little bit of Obama speaking. One thing he mentioned was keeping premiums down. I just wonder how anyone on the left swallows that one, and still claims to have integrity. He will keep lying as long as they keep supporting it.

Hmmm...my insurance dropped to $80 per month, no co-pay, no prescription fee, no difference whether in-vs-out of network coverage, no deductible. I pay $80 a month, and I can get literally any health care I need with no out-of-pocket cost. Ditto the other members of my immediate family. Most of the people I know experienced similar salutary effects. I don't know anyone whose premium increased. The stories I've read of people who did have increased premiums were of people who had super-high deductibles and co-pays or something beforehand, which plans the insurance companies decided to drop.
 
The problem I have with all of this is that it is not something that was written years and years ago, it is a new piece of legislation and they could have written "federal" in there just as easily as the wrote "state". They didn't.
Words don't matter anymore? Thanks, SCOTUS, you suck.

The language that you are referencing is four words out of a 900 page bill. Such minor mistakes in the language are extremely common and, in any other ordinary political climate, such a mistake would have been fixed as a rather routine practice. But given the Republican's antithesis to any remote resemblance of an attempt to work with the President on this issue (or nearly any other issue before the Trade Agreement), such a fix had to wait until it got all the way to the Supreme Court.
 
Too many threads on this, but this is more or less my post for the other one...

The dissenting opinion is right, this decision is a gross misinterpretation of the actual ACA language. Some seven times in ACA is specifies subsidies and tax credits though "Exchange established by the State." The majority in this 6-3 decision just decided that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and by extension, the Department of Health and Human Services equates to a State. The argument can now be made that by precedence on what is equal to a State. If a law references a State, the Federal government can now argue any relevant department is now capable of being involved in that definition.

I don't know that this would stand up as a de-facto repeal of the 10th Amendment but this country has been heading that way for a good 70 years now. This decision is disappointing but certainly not surprising.
 
No, I not saying that at all. All rulings are not the same. Bringing down Obamacare would be especially messy as it would be the cause of many deaths of many people who depend upon Obamacare.

Utter nonsense. This ruling doesn't affect those who were fortunate enough to now qualify under the ACA for Medicaid coverage which is by far the vast majority of newly ensured. I'd love for you to provide one credible source (just a hint, that's not Media Matters) that projected that "many deaths of many people" would result if the ruling was the opposite.
 
I don't know that this would stand up as a de-facto repeal of the 10th Amendment but this country has been heading that way for a good 70 years now. This decision is disappointing but certainly not surprising.

A de-facto repeal of the 10th amendment occurred looong before this decision. This quote comes from US v. Darby Lumber (1941):

"The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers."
 
AMERICA.....HAS JUST BEEN GRUBERED!
cursing.gif
 
They didn't craft the law. They ruled that the law, though not clear in this instance, should be enforced in the way that it was clearly intended to be enforced by the people that passed it.

The courts rule on the intent of the law all the time.

They did craft the law, the upheld an argument for which the ACA legislation does not say.
 
It's good to see Roberts is somewhat sane. He is so unlike Alito, Scalia and Thomas in that regard.
 
It's their obligation to work on legislation as they see fit. I prefer Republicans not clean up the mess Democrats made. It's their plan, they passed it without a single Republican vote, in the dead of night, during the Holidays. Let them clean up their mess. If people are unsatisfied, let them remember who was responsible.

Seems very fair to me.

Who knows about fair, but their damn job is to govern. If they don't like the law, their job now is to change it, not bitch about it.

And democrats can't clean up their mess because the GOP controls Congress.
 
Then the remedy is legislative change.

The ultimate point of the Supreme Court is to decide on the merit of a challenge based the case made vs. the wording of the law in question and that case made. It is not the purpose of the Supreme Court to determine what should happen when the government *thinks* something should have happened according to legislative plan, but did not for whatever reason.

ACA as written is very explicit in what tax credits and subsidies are to be applied to, and in seven separate parts of ACA it explicitly says "Exchange established by the State." What ACA does *not* say about tax credits and subsidies is an exchange established by the State or the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The dissenting opinion is right, the Federal argument should have failed forcing Congressional remedy for the mistake made.

Obviously reasonable minds can come to different conclusions. The point was there was legal precedent on both sides. It's just not a slam dunk case.
 
Maybe the Cons will finally stop trying to rely on legislation from the bench. Perhaps they will get smart and actually work WITH the PPACA (fix the legislation, where appropriate and expand state exchanges), because they are out of options in working against it.

you can't fix garbage. which is exactly what obamcare is. garbage.
the only way to fix it is to scrap it and start over.
the SCOTUS got this wrong again.

the intent was not to give every person subsidies. the intent was to force states to setup exchanges and the incentive was to give them subsidies in return.
that is why they wrote the law the way they did.

of course the SCOTUS is just covering their rear end because the got the first decision on obamacare wrong as well. Roberts is trying to protect himself and instead of
standing up for the constitution they continue to hand more and more power over to the government.
 
This is really good stuff. Glad that we don't have to re-legislate the entire healthcare law and now we can focus on using the tools it provides to supply better healthcare for cheaper.

they are expecting a 20-40% increase again this year on obamacare plans how is that getting cheaper?
 
AMERICA.....HAS JUST BEEN GRUBERED!
cursing.gif

The lesson here is lying and deception to gain support for a law once passed is A-OK. All the politicians have to do is say, "Well, we did it for your own good" and all is forgiven. :mrgreen:
 
Didn't realize they had a veto proof majority.

They don't but does that mean until they get a veto proof majority, the GOPers only job is to sit on their asses and bitch all day long about democrats?
 
Who knows about fair, but their damn job is to govern. If they don't like the law, their job now is to change it, not bitch about it.

And democrats can't clean up their mess because the GOP controls Congress.

democrats had a chance to clean up their mess and they failed. they had a chance to stop it before the mess began to begin with.
they can't change the law Obama refuses and veto's any change made to it.

we will have to wait till 2016 when he is voted out to get this destructive law out of the way.
 
They don't but does that mean until they get a veto proof majority, the GOPers only job is to sit on their asses and bitch all day long about democrats?

then please tell me what they can pass to fix this mess (there is no fixing this the way the bill is by the way) that Obama won't veto or democrats won't filibuster?
enlighten us.
 
The problem I have with all of this is that it is not something that was written years and years ago, it is a new piece of legislation and they could have written "federal" in there just as easily as the wrote "state". They didn't.
Words don't matter anymore? Thanks, SCOTUS, you suck.

Words dont mean what they mean, they mean what they ought to mean.
 
Hmmm...my insurance dropped to $80 per month, no co-pay, no prescription fee, no difference whether in-vs-out of network coverage, no deductible. I pay $80 a month, and I can get literally any health care I need with no out-of-pocket cost. Ditto the other members of my immediate family. Most of the people I know experienced similar salutary effects. I don't know anyone whose premium increased. The stories I've read of people who did have increased premiums were of people who had super-high deductibles and co-pays or something beforehand, which plans the insurance companies decided to drop.

it only dropped because you get a subsidy. if you have a good job and have a family and aren't single then well you get screwed.
we taxpayers are paying for you to get your drop in premium.

I have had nothing but major premium increases as my company has to comply with obamacare and they shove more of the cost onto me.
 
Who knows about fair, but their damn job is to govern. If they don't like the law, their job now is to change it, not bitch about it.

And democrats can't clean up their mess because the GOP controls Congress.

Yes we know, Democrats caused a mess, and it's the Republicans fault if they don't clean it up.

Lot's of other things to address. Why not let people live with what the Democrats did to them. Seems reasonable to me.
 
I'd love for you to provide one credible source … that projected that "many deaths of many people" would result if the ruling was the opposite.

Common sense tells you that people without health insurance sometimes die prematurely. They also drive up healthcare costs and therefore insurance premiums. And isn't one unnecessary death too many? How do you feel about thousands? Like 20-50 thousand a year?

they are expecting a 20-40% increase again this year on obamacare plans how is that getting cheaper?

Askin' ain't gettin'. And you offer no evidence. Again? Let's see it from last year. Or the year before. Or …
 
Utter nonsense. This ruling doesn't affect those who were fortunate enough to now qualify under the ACA for Medicaid coverage which is by far the vast majority of newly ensured. I'd love for you to provide one credible source (just a hint, that's not Media Matters) that projected that "many deaths of many people" would result if the ruling was the opposite.

I have no source credible or other. I would like to see your source that says people who already have Obamacare need not worry about the ruling. By the way, Media Matters deals with stuff which is in their name: media So if the issue is never covered in the MSM, it will not be covered by Media Matters.
 
the intent was not to give every person subsidies. the intent was to force states to setup exchanges and the incentive was to give them subsidies in return.
that is why they wrote the law the way they did.
That clearly was NOT the intent of any drafters of the legislation, nor did anyone believe that was the intent, nor does a reading of the law support your bizarre claim here. None of the states delegated their exchanges to the federal government, with the assumption it would deny subsidies to that state's residents. Nothing in the implementation of the federal exchanges indicates that people who use federal exchanges did not qualify for subsidies.

The only reason why this case exists is because a libertarian think-tank, backed by the Koch brothers and other conservatives, pored over the statute with the goal of finding something - anything - to challenge in the courts, no matter how tiny or frivolous.
A Cynical Challenge to the A.C.A. - The New Yorker


of course the SCOTUS is just covering their rear end because the got the first decision on obamacare wrong as well. Roberts is trying to protect himself and instead of
standing up for the constitution they continue to hand more and more power over to the government.
lol

Sorry, no, not even close.

This case did not in any way rule on whether the ACA or the subsidies were constitutional; that issue was settled years ago.

This case was very specifically about what mechanisms the court uses to determine the meaning of a statute. What they found was that the single use of the phrase "exchanges established by the State" was nowhere near as clear and decisive as the opponents claimed. Roberts has no obligation whatsoever to rule in favor of the federal government this time, because this case is substantially different than the past cases.

But hey, don't let details like the nature of constitutional law, or the judicial philosophies of the justices, or the nature of the case itself stop you from a good rant....
 
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