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

As I said, if we're honest our opinion about the correctness of the decision is highly correlated with how we feel about the law.
...
I don't think either of us is a constitutional law expert so I don't see the point of arguing the fine points of constitutional law. But if you'd like to read the different opinions about this case, here's the SCOTUS blog's rundown of various opinions. What you'll find is some of the best experts discussing why, obviously, Roberts was correct, and other experts discussing why, clearly, Scalia was.

They didn't make an "error." They interpreted the law differently than the dissent. Ultimately the majority decided that had Congress intended to provide subsidies ONLY state exchanges, they would have made that clear, not hidden the "intent" so well that no one, literally, in Congress mentioned or debated this outcome, nor did the states know of the consequences of deferring to the Feds when they made their decision about setting up the exchange. As one commenter quotes Scalia in another context, "Congress does not hide elephants in mouse holes.”

Nonsense, the decision was legally indefensible EXCEPT to the shameless or delusional - unless one wishes to ignore the Constitution's separation of powers and embrace SCOTUS as our true oligarchy of nine - which, I suspect, the majority do. On the other hand, we are spared a Republican clown act of trying to save the program in order to avoid blame, and it gives them a platform to continue to use OC (or Scotus care) as a target.

There is nothing remarkable in the opinion, other than it barely pretends to have a legal basis to what, I am sure, the majority know to be little more than a finding based on fear of (or opposition to) the actual written law. One sensed that at times Roberts wrote with a wink, not unlike the Russian Judge in the Khodorkovsky trial...except that trial the judge laughed earlier with the defense, and then did his oligarchy duty and gave the tycoon the maximum new sentence.

Perhaps most let their view of Obamacare shape their opinion - rather, my view of law shapes my opinion of the legality of Obamacare.
 
Talk is cheap; impeach them or deal with their decision. I applaud it!

You applaud it b/c you don't care for the rule of law, i.e. you don't care if the government is constrained from imposing dictates upon you.

Congratulations, you are just like every other serf that has lived and died under the rule of oligarchs who are smarter and more ruthless than you - you deserve the fate that awaits you ;)
 
There is a perverse pleasure watching our right-wing friends post page after page of how this now settled law is somehow not a law just because they were sure the SCOTUS would rule in their favor. There must be some tear-soaked keyboards in the rooms of some of our most fundamental right wing nuts here at the DP.

unconstutional acts from a body that is supposed to uphold the constitution they deserve the scorn that they get.
 
ludin said:
ie I can't actually address the issue with any kind of logic.
I don't owe you healthcare.

I'm not sure where the "logic" remark comes from. Feel free to use as much logic as you want.

Actually, you do owe me health care, just as I owe you health care. Everyone in society owes everyone else a certain set of duties, and that's one of them. It always has been, since roughly the beginning of the human race. People join societies and take care of each other. In a very large society, such as ours, we pay taxes, and those monies are administered. Usually (unfortunately) they're not administered fairly, and I think we could do better, but that's just how it is. Again, you're free to live under the alternative.

ludin said:
The public option wasn't just squashed by republicans but democrats as well. so this pandering lie is done and over with.

What lie did I tell? What I said was not that republicans had squashed the public option, but that conservatives did so.

ludin said:
no only democrats were saying that almost every republican knew that this was a lie as well.

Hmmm...it seems to me this is false.

Here, for example, is an article apparently paid for by the Heritage Foundation on the subject:

Competition in the Health Care Market: The Next Revolution

They're pretty republican-heavy, aren't they?

Also, apparently Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis) thinks this is one of the things Republicans have proposed before:

Republicans have proposed many solutions to control health care costs and improve quality, Ron Johnson says | PolitiFact

Ron Paul seems also to think competition would lower costs:

Health Care

I'm sure I could find more if I wanted to spend an hour or two looking for old press releases and such. Now, please note I do not say that conservative democrats didn't harp on the competition bit. Only that republicans did, too.

ludin said:
you can't force coverage on people and expect prices to decrease.

Depends on how it's done. I would agree with you that the ACA is far from a perfect solution to our health care problems.
 
Ockham said:
The roads in my State are paid by my state, county roads like the one I live on are paid for by taxes taken at the county level. Unless you live in my county or my state, what and how much exactly do you pay that I would "enjoy" exactly? Quantify it for me.

Impossible, of course. But then again, that works against the notion that you (or anyone else, including Ludin) pays a certain quantifiable amount to anyone. Anyway, I'm not sure why quantifiability is relevant. By way of analogy: we could never count the grains of sand in the Sahara Desert. Does that mean there's no sand in the Sahara, or that the grains didn't come from somewhere specific?

Ockham said:
I pay my own way - I enjoy Netflix ... do you pay my Netflix bill? I enjoy my internet service, I enjoy my car... did you subsidize my car and how much did you subsidize so that I can thank you properly?

See above about amounts, but I very likely did subsidize your car, and Netflix, for that matter (at least to the extent the service makes use of the Internet). Me and the roughly 150 million other taxpayers.

Ockham said:
The justice system was here before you or I paid taxes to support it and it will be here long after

If everyone stopped paying taxes, there would be no justice system. Taxation is not a sufficient condition for a justice system, but it is a necessary one, and hence lays claim to being a cause thereof. Furthermore, if enough people stopped paying taxes, there wouldn't be a justice system, and that system is degraded the less revenue is available.

Ockham said:
I "enjoy" the benefits of the justice system... hm... I guess I could say I benefit by it's existence but I don't really have a choice if I want to continue to live in the United States

What was that Conservative rallying cry after Katrina? It was something to the effect that the people in New Orleans had chosen to live there, so they didn't deserve any help. I don't know whether you took that stance, but if you did, this sounds pretty inconsistent to me.

Ockham said:
So let me just state for the record, you don't pay anything that you don't already have to pay by LAW... by LAW you and I pay taxes which keep interstate roads, which keep an military, which keeps a government. We do not have a choice, yet you want me to THANK you for paying your LAWFUL taxes because I benefit by you doing what you have no choice but to do - and that is pay your taxes if you indeed make enough money per year to qualify.

My use of the word "thank" was a figure of speech--sort of like "thanks to global warming, we'll have more hurricanes this year" or "thanks to a loophole in the applicable laws, corporation x was able to get away with poisoning its employees," or etc.

But that said, I'm not sure why you shouldn't be grateful to live in a society. As I said to Ludin, the alternative is available. If you don't like Somalia, you could always hike your way up to the extreme north of Canada or Siberia or something and truly make your own way. Good luck with that--if you don't die in the first six months, you'll likely be insane by the end of the first year. The alternative is to seek to company of others and live by implicit agreement to take care of each other.
 
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You may not like it, but the Supremes decide what is Constitutional--always have.

I doubt if you were calling the decisions on voting rights and citizens united 1.0 and 2.0 unconstitutional.
I didn't like those decisions--but they're the law of the land.

And you may not be happy with their next big decision--on gay marriage .

unconstutional acts from a body that is supposed to uphold the constitution they deserve the scorn that they get.
 
Give up your insurance and go with Obamacare.

I did just that. I support the Act and I felt it was my patriotic duty to join in the effort.

Jimmy Carter … let Americans rot in Tehran.

They all came back alive.

>>25 million people were losing their coverage

Part of that was what's called churn, a regular pattern. And, as was pointed out by another poster, the ACA cleaned out a lot of sham policies.

>>See how that works?

You should now.

There is a reason that these programs have trillions in unfunded liabilities.

Indeed there is. They are pay-as-you-go. In that sense, it's foolish to even say they have unfunded liabilities.

>>When will you hold your politicians accountable for spending the funds you contributed to SS?

Money has been borrowed from the Trust Fund. It's paid back with interest.
 
Nonsense, the decision was legally indefensible EXCEPT to the shameless or delusional - unless one wishes to ignore the Constitution's separation of powers and embrace SCOTUS as our true oligarchy of nine - which, I suspect, the majority do. On the other hand, we are spared a Republican clown act of trying to save the program in order to avoid blame, and it gives them a platform to continue to use OC (or Scotus care) as a target.

There is nothing remarkable in the opinion, other than it barely pretends to have a legal basis to what, I am sure, the majority know to be little more than a finding based on fear of (or opposition to) the actual written law. One sensed that at times Roberts wrote with a wink, not unlike the Russian Judge in the Khodorkovsky trial...except that trial the judge laughed earlier with the defense, and then did his oligarchy duty and gave the tycoon the maximum new sentence.

Perhaps most let their view of Obamacare shape their opinion - rather, my view of law shapes my opinion of the legality of Obamacare.

Where and when did you get your law degree? Where did you practice and do you still practice?
 
There is no voter who would oppose the Repub to protect ACA who would ever have voted for the Repub anyway.

You think there is not one Republican or undecided who would lose their insurance if the ACA was "repealed"? LOL
 
Your question has zero relevance to the conversation you jumped into.

It certainly does. I just gave you a reference that uses the word "State" to mean the Federal Govt. Then you have "Head of State" which refers to the President and there's Secretary of State". They all use the word "State" to refer to the Federal Govt. But I think the SC got it right like Robert's said, for the reason that only an idiot would think they wrote the law so that it would fail on purpose. They never expected the modern GOP I guess. Their idiocy has reached new heights with each passing year.
 
One might think there is a bit of conflict taking place in the back rooms of the SCOTUS

Chief Justice Roberts quietly burns Scalia in the Obamacare decision

The Supreme Court ruling Thursday is the second time Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia have squared off on President Obama's health-care reform law. The chief justice wrote the decision upholding the law the first time it came before the court in 2012, and Scalia dissented.

Roberts used the dissent's own words against Scalia in the case decided this week
, which focused on what Congress was trying to do when it passed the Affordable Care Act, generally known as Obamacare. <snip> Scalia disagreed. But, back in 2012, he had written that without subsidies, "the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended."
 
Quit your bellyaching, you sound old.

First of all, 18 more months and Marco Rubio will be president of the United States. And he'll be the greatest president since Ronald Reagan.

I believe that the hand of divine providence has always guided America. When we were a colony in the woods, we had perhaps the greatest group of political minds in the history of the world to that point and since.... all miraculously gathered up in one spot.... our founding fathers. Right when we needed them.

When we needed a Lincoln, we had a Lincoln.

When we needed an FDR to get us through World War 2, we had an FDR.

When we needed a Ronald Reagan to get us out of the doldrums of the 70's, we had a Ronald Reagan.

America will be fine. In fact, it's never been better. We smashed and owned the Soviets in the Cold War, leaving us the only superpower in the world. We dominate the world's high tech industry, the banking and finance industry, the media, etc. We are utterly and completely dominant on the world stage in a way that no nation has ever been in the history of the world. In fact, you're living in the golden age of the American Era. Pax Americana, I believe they call it.

The debt is high, so what? Name one country that doesn't have a high national debt. Look at what's going on in the EU right now with Greece. The whole thing looks ready to implode. China? Would you trade places with China? I sure as hell wouldn't. China has a whole host of problems we can't even begin to discuss or it would take up an entire page.

And in 18 months, the Obama experiment will end, and the country will vote in a CONSERVATIVE who will be our next Reagan.

LOL Rubio.....you are quite the optimist,. He doesn't have a chance in hell of even getting VP with Jeb taking all the wind out of his sails. The election will be a competition between the economies of Clinton and Obama against the Bush economy. We will see who wins.....
 
Any evidence to back that up? Has the rate of increase slowed over the past few years?

I gotta laugh at the response from reactionaries in this thread. They're all over the lot. "It's great news! Now the Democrats will be forced to continue defending the Act." "What a disaster for the country!" Just what I'd expect from people who can't think things through clearly.

The legislation will continue to gain in popularity, and for good reason. A win for Democrats and democracy. :)

Two things..

1. US is not a Democracy. It's a Constitutional Republic. Yes, HUGE difference if you paid attention in Government class in school.

2. ACA rate hikes in 2016.
 
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.

No, they ruled on their own view of intent as they needed to justify approving it. If they didn't change the intent, it would have 100% failed as under Equal Protection Clause of the 15th Amendment.. You can't provide a subsidy to one and not the other. So to get around it Supreme Court has redefined the words and it's intention by redefining the word State = Federal Government. So by this virtue, and most Democrats will be happy, there is no such thing as State's rights anymore which again, the Supreme Court failed to uphold Constitutional law (10th Amendment).

Now State = Federal when it doesn't. This is a uber Big Government ruling. Enjoy the ride folks.. this ruling has sealed the deal for me. I am getting the hell out of dodge.
 
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.

Minor mistakes? Seriously.. do you still think is has another definition?
 
You bring up interesting points, though I'm not sure I (always) see the same results you envision.

Why is it you believe Mrs. Clinton would let the ACA collapse upon itself?

(she was a strong healthcare proponent during her husband's presidency, but got beaten back by the insurance industry then, from my best recollection)

I do find it interesting you feel a Republican could save it, but with someone like Mr. Bush you might be right, seeing that he seems extremely moderate to me. But I'm still not sure I see the GOP as a whole getting behind the ACA or universal healthcare at this time.

And you are right in that there is the possibility of MedicAid expansion (though I originally felt there could be a MediCare expansion, possibly starting with a buy-in, whether subsidized or not). But yes, the MedicAid threshold was increased 125% under the ACA, and it could be progressively bumped-up over time.

I wouldn't doubt that under the umbrella-guise of the ACA, several of these tacts merge and morph over the years into something approaching universal coverage.

But I'm dead against a means-tested 'government picks winners & losers system', like the current ACA and MedicAid. If there's a benefit to be provided, it should be provided for all, equally.

[BTW CanadaJohn, my grandfather migrated from Poland to Canada firstly, living there for quite a few years while bringing in tons of family members, before eventually ending-up in the States. Consequently, I've got relatives from Quebec to Vancouver and we visit each-other occasionally, so I've had some very basic familiarity with the Canuck health system since the early '70's - that's why, in part, I want us to enjoy universal healthcare here.]

My comments were looking mainly at the politics of the issue. From what I can see, there isn't a hope in hell that the Democrats will win back the House in 2016 and chances are very good that the Senate will remain, marginally, in Republican hands. As such, Republicans will run the agenda in Congress for the foreseeable future. Hillary Clinton is pretty much despised in most Republican circles and also remembered for her disaster of healthcare reform in the early 90s that first brought her arrogance to light. There are few Republicans who will work to fix the ACA with Clinton as President. With a Republican President, and one like Jeb Bush, the Republicans will then own the ACA and it will be in their best interests to fix it, politically. Someone like Bush, a policy wonk and an even tempered person, can bring compromise to the table and bring a majority of both parties to reform.

The reason I suggested an expansion of Medicaid is because the original rationale for the ACA was that too many poor people lacked any insurance - it's a legitimate concern in a first world nation - the way to solve it is for the federal government to self-insure them. Why subsidize payments to an insurance company to pad their profit margins when you can simply on a cost basis provide the care needed? If that had been done originally, the majority of people, most of whom liked their insurance, wouldn't have been nearly as opposed. And that truly would have been the first step towards a universal healthcare program in your system. When it was shown that the services could be provided at a lesser cost per patient than under the previous system, more Americans would have been interested in buying in.

As for having ancestors in and from Canada, they can probably tell you that our healthcare system has problems and isn't universally equal across the Provinces. As an example, pharmacare, or what is basically prescription medicine coverage, isn't part of our healthcare package. But in Quebec, the Provincial government subsidizes that far more than other provinces. Our system provides for basic coverages universally but much of today's healthcare services and needs are not covered. But the benefit we do have and the comfort we generally feel, is that if we ever get really, deadly, sick our care for the most part is covered and we don't have financial concerns related to health.
 
Compared to America you're second rate. America says jump, Canada asks how high.

If the American people don't want Obamacare, and we don't, then it won't outlast Obama. Your defeatism might be true if we were talking about Canadians, but we're talking about Americans here. We're doers.

Perhaps in Texas, reality is an alien concept. Like it or not, after 2016, if the Republicans hold the Senate it will be by one or two seats, not the 60 needed to rule the roost. Even if you have a Republican President, which I hope you do, you'll lack complete control of the agenda and a vote to repeal the ACA without something to replace it is dead in the water in the Senate.

One could argue, after the past 6 plus years, your "doer" cred is a little tarnished.
 
One might think there is a bit of conflict taking place in the back rooms of the SCOTUS

It's true that it would not work as intended without the exchanges. But the law clearly states that subsidies would only be provided thru state exchanges. The intent was to strongarm the states into shouldering the full expense d o wn the road, another unfunded mandate. The federal government offered to cover the majority of the costs in the beginning (you states would be fools to not do this! It's free!), but then the money fades away in subsequent years. The feds could handle it because the taxes started years before benefits, so essentially we were taxed to collect bribe money and expected to be short sighted enough to ignore the eventual costs. And those who could see past tomorrow were labelled obstructionists.

But there were enough state leaders who COULD see down the road, and much to the dismay of their liberal constituents who tend to beselfish assholes who don't care about broader consequences as long as they get their cookie today, said no. So the tactic didn't work. So now the SC has rigged the game and just given the victory to the current administration anyway. We have officially crossed the line as a n ation. The people are no longer represented in government. The last time that happened.....
 
So the intent of what the law is instead of what it actually says is more relevant.

Good thing Secretary Sebelius spent all that time lobbying the states to create their own exchanges since she was going by what the law said, now those same states will be dropping their exchanges after all the mess that was created.

Interesting that President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts conducted the Presidential Oath of Office again when they mixed up the words a little. What could these two Constitutional Scholars have known then that they didn't know now?
 
The reason I suggested an expansion of Medicaid is because the original rationale for the ACA was that too many poor people lacked any insurance - it's a legitimate concern in a first world nation - the way to solve it is for the federal government to self-insure them. Why subsidize payments to an insurance company to pad their profit margins when you can simply on a cost basis provide the care needed?

That's not how Medicaid works anymore. Medicaid--which was expanded by the ACA--is largely in the hands of risk-bearing private insurance companies. Bush and Rubio both played a role in privatizing Florida's Medicaid program, for instance.
 
It's true that it would not work as intended without the exchanges. But the law clearly states that subsidies would only be provided thru state exchanges. The intent was to strongarm the states into shouldering the full expense d o wn the road, another unfunded mandate. The federal government offered to cover the majority of the costs in the beginning (you states would be fools to not do this! It's free!), but then the money fades away in subsequent years. The feds could handle it because the taxes started years before benefits, so essentially we were taxed to collect bribe money and expected to be short sighted enough to ignore the eventual costs. And those who could see past tomorrow were labelled obstructionists.

But the problem is the states didn't know about this hammer - run your own exchange or your residents get no subsidies - when they were deciding whether or not to run their own exchanges. Congress didn't debate this 'intent' - not a word of debate on this huge issue. When Congress voted, not one Congress person justified his or her vote on this 'intent.' The "intent" wasn't discovered even by Conservatives opposed to the law until a presentation in late 2010 to CEI, 9 months after the bill passed in March. It would take many more months for the 'intent' to develop into a case and pretty much no one, including states deciding their own exchanges, knew about the 'intent' until one of the lawyers published an op-ed in the WSJ that revealed this "intent" to the rest of us, including state officials.

But there were enough state leaders who COULD see down the road, and much to the dismay of their liberal constituents who tend to beselfish assholes who don't care about broader consequences as long as they get their cookie today, said no. So the tactic didn't work. So now the SC has rigged the game and just given the victory to the current administration anyway. We have officially crossed the line as a n ation. The people are no longer represented in government. The last time that happened.....

selfish assholes.... Nice job letting us know there isn't even a pretense of being anything but a partisan blowhard. Thanks.
 
I'm not sure where the "logic" remark comes from. Feel free to use as much logic as you want.

Actually, you do owe me health care, just as I owe you health care. Everyone in society owes everyone else a certain set of duties, and that's one of them. It always has been, since roughly the beginning of the human race. People join societies and take care of each other. In a very large society, such as ours, we pay taxes, and those monies are administered. Usually (unfortunately) they're not administered fairly, and I think we could do better, but that's just how it is. Again, you're free to live under the alternative.

no I don't owe you anything. you are responsible for yourself. I don't work to pay for you I work to provide for my family. no people don't join socieities to take care of each other.
no you are free to live in a place where everyone pays for everything for you. I hear cuba, china, north korea are nice this time of year.
the government will take care of you at other peoples expense.


What lie did I tell? What I said was not that republicans had squashed the public option, but that conservatives did so.
Liberals squashed it as well. so yes it was a lie.


Hmmm...it seems to me this is false.

Here, for example, is an article apparently paid for by the Heritage Foundation on the subject:

Competition in the Health Care Market: The Next Revolution

you need to read the article. obamacare and what is being proposed here is not the same. what they propse is actual competition in the market place obamacare is not competition in the market place. what the article proposes is allowing for people to buy insurance across state lines which is something republicans have proposed for years.

that is true market competition. obamacare doesn't allow you to buy insurance across state lines.

They're pretty republican-heavy, aren't they?

if the article only said what you thought it said but it didn't.

Also, apparently Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis) thinks this is one of the things Republicans have proposed before:

Republicans have proposed many solutions to control health care costs and improve quality, Ron Johnson says | PolitiFact

Ron Paul seems also to think competition would lower costs:

Health Care

again one if the big republican plans all along has been to make sure that you can sell insurance across state lines and in truth make it true competition.
obamacare is not true competition that is why almost all insurance companies are seeking 1-30 and in some cases 70% increases in their premium rates for next year.
it is why in the first year insurance premiums soared 40% on average across the nation. it is why the 2nd year we saw 20-40% increases.

I'm sure I could find more if I wanted to spend an hour or two looking for old press releases and such. Now, please note I do not say that conservative democrats didn't harp on the competition bit. Only that republicans did, too.

Yet none of them say what you think they say.

Depends on how it's done. I would agree with you that the ACA is far from a perfect solution to our health care problems.

It doesn't matter how it is done. you can't demand insurance companies provide X services and then think it is going to lower costs.
it isn't.
 
No, they ruled on their own view of intent as they needed to justify approving it. If they didn't change the intent, it would have 100% failed as under Equal Protection Clause of the 15th Amendment.. You can't provide a subsidy to one and not the other. So to get around it Supreme Court has redefined the words and it's intention by redefining the word State = Federal Government. So by this virtue, and most Democrats will be happy, there is no such thing as State's rights anymore which again, the Supreme Court failed to uphold Constitutional law (10th Amendment).

Now State = Federal when it doesn't. This is a uber Big Government ruling. Enjoy the ride folks.. this ruling has sealed the deal for me. I am getting the hell out of dodge.

There isn't an intellectually honest person alive on the planet who believes Congress intended to deny subsidies to the Federally run exchanges. That's not what democrats voted for and republicans voted against. As the "intent" is interpreted by right wingers, the core of the ACA was nothing but a voluntary program and each state had the opportunity to elect in or out of the subsidies, the employer mandate, and the individual mandate. I'm sure that's what conservatives prefer, but that clearly and obviously wasn't what Congress intended when both sides cast their votes.

BTW we'll miss you. Say hello to Galt when you get there.
 
that is the one flaw in the constitution. there is no check and balance against the SCOTUS. the only thing we can hope now is that in 2016 we get a republican president
and be able to repeal this law through the same method that it was put in. that way we can avoid the stoppage in the senate.

The legislature is the check on SCOTUS. They can change the law and impeach judges. This of course assumes that SCOTUS uses the law to make rulings, and doesnt just make stuff up.
 
LOL. Good plan. Should work out for the "we" whoever that is. Just pick and choose what laws to follow and what laws to ignore. Can't see a problem with that....:shock: :lamo

Its works for the people in charge.
 
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