The Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health care law today in a splintered, complex opinion that gives Obama a major election-year victory.
Basically, a bare majority of the justices said that the individual mandate — the requirement that most Americans buy health insurance or pay a fine — is constitutional as a tax.
“Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in an opinion that reflected a 5-4 vote on on the question.
Roberts — a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush — provided a key vote to preserve the landmark health care law, which figures to be a major issue in Obama’s re-election bid against Republican opponent Mitt Romney.
A Conservative website is highlighting Mitt Romney, in video from a March 2006 press conference unearthed by American Bridge, delivering a ringing endorsement of the individual mandate … and claiming credit for having proposed it in the first place.
With regards to the mandate, the individual responsibility program which I proposed, I was very pleased to see that the compromise from the two houses includes the personal responsibility principle, that is essential for bringing health care costs down for everyone, and for getting everybody the health insurance they deserve and need. So I was very pleased with that development.
Former President Bill Clintonspoke at a recent fundraiser earlier this week and warned of the dangers this country faced if the Supreme Court rules against President Obama’s Health Care Law. Given his special abilities to explain complex matters to a two-year old, Mr. Clinton broke it down like this”
If the Supreme Court decides to invalidate the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, there will be consequences, Clinton said, which he claims aren’t being reported, and which he spelled out:
• Changing the health-care delivery system has already produced two years in a row of 4 percent inflation in health-care costs. This is the first time in 50 years that health-care costs have gone up so little. Killing the Affordable Care Act would let inflation loose again.
• Some 2.6 million people ages 21 to 26, who now have insurance coverage for the first time because they can be carried under their parents’ policy, would lose it.
• $1.3 billion dollars in insurance refunds have already been paid to businesses and individuals because now the law says 85 percent of your premium has to go to health care and not to profits and promotion. (California hasn’t reported yet, but will likely increase that figure to more than $1.5 billion.) Refunds would shrink.
• If Republicans succeed in persuading the Supreme Court to repeal the individual mandate, somewhere between 12 million and 16 million Americans will be unable to get health insurance because of preexisting conditions.
The Daily Beast also reports that “Clinton predicted that if the law is declared unconstitutional, Republicans will suffer a backlash when millions of Americans calculate what they have lost. Before the Affordable Care Act passed, two thirds of all the applications for bankruptcy were because of health-care emergencies, a consequence likely to return if health care inflation again rises precipitously.”
“Before Mitt Romney as governor signed the individual mandate, Massachusetts had the highest health-care costs in America. Today, that state is seventh, because inflation in health-care costs in that state have been much lower than in the country as a whole. Why? The mandate prevents insurance companies from shifting their promotional costs to consumers, Clinton said.”
The Supreme Court will issue its decision on Health Care on Thursday.
Rick Santorum’s new ad against Mitt Romney is a doosey!
The ad begins with a picture of President Obama and a female narrator asking viewers if they would vote for someone whose health care included “$50 abortions and killed thousands of jobs.”
She then asks if voters will vote for someone who supported “radical” cap-and-trade legislation, the Wall Street bailout or higher taxes.
At the end of the video, the woman reveals that the person she was talking about was not President Obama, but Mitt Romney.
While the Judges on the Supreme Court lose sleep over the upcoming health-care decision – they’re not really losing sleep. We already have a pretty good idea what this historically activist court will do – President Obama chimed in today for the first time with his opinion on what he believe the Court will do.
“Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama said at a news conference with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.
Conservative leaders say the law, which once fully implemented will require Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty, was an overreach by Obama and the Congress that passed it.
The president sought to turn that argument around, calling a potential rejection by the court an overreach of its own.
“And I’d just remind conservative commentators that, for years, what we have heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,” Obama said.
“Well, this is a good example, and I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step,” he said.
Republicans have been on a successful campaign to repeal the Affordable Health Care Law, the signature piece of legislation passed by the Obama administration. They have managed to bring their case all the way to the Supreme Court and now a decision on the future of the law is expected sometime in June.
But one thing Republicans cannot deny – although they will try – is the immediate help the law is bring to both Seniors and young adults. Listed below are just some of the benefits young adults are presently experiencing because of the Affordable Health Care Law.
Young adults can stay on their parent’s health insurance up to the age of 26. This is the case even if they’re married or live on their own. This provision resulted in 2.5 million young people gaining coverage. For young adults, this new protection means that they will have the freedom to make career choices based on what they want to do, not on where they can get health insurance. And for parents, it means they can breathe a little easier knowing their children are covered.
The law offers free prevention benefits that keep people healthy. Now, young adults can receive recommended preventive services, like flu shots, HIV and cancer screenings, contraceptive counseling and FDA-approved birth control, with no cost sharing. Visit www.healthcare.gov/prevention for a full list of services and plan dates.
Coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. For people who have been uninsured for six months and can’t buy private insurance because of a pre-existing condition, they may be able to join the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan. And under the new law, no plan can deny coverage to people under age 19 because of a pre-existing condition. To find out about plans available in your State, please visithttp://www.pcip.gov.
Insurers cannot put limits on coverage. In the past, some people with cancer or other chronic illnesses ran out of insurance coverage because their health care expenses reached a dollar limit imposed by their insurance company. Under the health care law, insurers can no longer impose lifetime dollar limits on essential health benefits and annual limits are being phased out by 2014. Also, insurance companies can no longer drop people when they get sick due to a mistake you made on your application.
Starting in 2014, there will be more options through the Affordable Care Act for coverage for young adults. New Affordable Insurance Exchanges, tax credits and the improvements to Medicaid will result in at least 30 million more insured people, including as many as 10 million young adults. For young adults, lacking affordable health care will soon become a thing of the past.
Every once in a while, a week comes along that brings clarity and definition to the world and enables us to find meaning in the beautiful things that make up our lives.
The circumstances – an unarmed teen carrying Skittles, a gated suburban community and a man with no official authority – along with simmering economic frustrations in the nation’s African-American community turned the death into a social touchstone. Social media, black radio and cable television drove the debate about racial profiling and the state of black males, helping give rise to an indelible image that seems to be everywhere: Trayvon Martin and his hoodie.
It shed light on the Florida Stand Your Ground Law, which essentially allows people with guns to decide who’s a threat and who’s not, and to allow suburban vigilante justice in the guise of neighborhood watch.And as more evidence comes out about what might have happened on that fateful night, more questions are raised. Finally, what about Wrigley, the company that makes Skittles? That’s complicated. Sales are up, but for all the wrong reasons.
As if the Martin story wasn’t complicated enough, this was also the week of health care. Ironic, no?
Enough words have been senselessly killed since Monday in an effort to describe, analyze, parse, interpret, divine, enunciate, explicate and pontificate on what exactly the justices meant, when it’s fairly clear that the conservatives would rather make love to a broccoli stalk than rule the law to be constitutional.
And the broccoli bit is the heart of the problem. Is it just me or did anyone else get the sense that Antonin Scalia didn’t merely complain about having a 2,700 page law to leaf through, he never actually read any of the briefs related to it? How else to explain his repetition of the broccoli conundrum that was standard fare in the mainstream press for the past 6 months? Or his mis-citation of the Cornhusker Kickback, which was troubling enough for a man of his intellect? I thought the justices were supposed to focus on the law, not repeat the talking points that radiate from all corners of the Cable News/Twitter/Blogosphere Axis.
At least we’ll know the outcome of the health care law at the end of June. After that, President Obama and Mitt Romney can adjust their campaigns and move forward with their lives.
Trayvon Martin’s parents might not get that kind of closure for many months after that. And they’ll always have more questions than answers.
Based on the some of the questions asked today by the more Conservative majority in the Supreme Court, political analysts are suggesting a possible bad outcome for the Health Care Reform passed over a year ago by the Obama administration.
The New York Times Reports: With the fate of President Obama’s health care law hanging in the balance at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, a lawyer for the administration faced a barrage of skeptical questions from four of the court’s more conservative justices.
“Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked the lawyer, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., only minutes into the argument.
Justice Antonin Scalia soon joined in. “May failure to purchase something subject me to regulation?” he asked. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked if the government could compel the purchase of cellphones. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked about forcing people to buy burial insurance.
The conventional view is that the administration will need one of those four votes to win the case, and it was not clear on Tuesday that it had captured one.
The court’s four more liberal members – Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – indicated that they supported the law, as expected. Justice Clarence Thomas, who asked no questions, is thought likely to vote to strike down the law.
The right winged propaganda machine is succeeding. A new ABC News / Washington Post poll reveals that a majority of Americans have bought into the lie and now believe that the health care law signed by president Obama should be repealed.
Two-thirds of Americans say the U.S. Supreme Court should throw out either the individual mandate in the federal health care law or the law in its entirety, signaling the depth of public disagreement with that element of the Affordable Care Act.
This ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that Americans oppose the law overall by 52-41 percent. And 67 percent believe the high court should either ditch the law or at least the portion that requires nearly all Americans to have coverage.
The case against the President’s Health Care Law goes before the United States Supreme Court next week where Republicans will argue that the law is unconstitutional because it requires American to purchase health insurance. No other alternative policies are suggested, so if the law is repealed the status quo takes effect again and the gouging of Americans by greedy insurance companies will once again be accepted.
Business as usual.
The poll was conducted by telephone March 7-10, 2012, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults.
Once upon a time, in a world far far away… it must have been somewhere around 200… there lived a man called Newt Gingrich. This man was a Republican politician who actively advocated for the individual mandate – requiring that everyone must have some kind oh health insurance.
Then magically, a Democratic president was sworn into office in 2009. He enacted the individual mandate that Newt wanted and Republicans, including Newt, turned their backs against everything they once held dear – including the individual mandate.
The end… of a Republican party that once stood for something.
They’re pretty certain the provision will hold up against the onslaught of the Republicans and the Supreme Court, but just in case the unexpected happens, some Congressional Democrats are already making other preparations to replace the individual mandate.
One idea floating around is that of Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO). According to her plan, an open enrollment period will be offered where people can voluntarily buy insurance policy. After that period passes, anyone wishing to purchase insurance will incur a penalty, causing their policy to be considerably higher.
The idea is based on existing requirements, where once a year individuals get to choose their insurance policies that best suit their needs. After that period passes, they face an expensive alternative when the need to get insurance arises.
Derek Thompson of the Washington Posts explained it this way;
Let’s say I tell you at the beginning of flu season that you can buy Nyquil for a $2 discount today, but tomorrow the price will go up to $20 forever. What do you do? You stock up on Nyquil, of course! Note that I haven’t required that you do anything. I’ve just weighted the incentives to make you buy the medicine. It’s not a mandate, just an irresistible deal.
Although this plan sounds like a great idea, even Claire McCaskill have reservations. She explains, “the issue is will the research support that approach as workable to still allow us to cover people with pre-existing conditions.”
The advantage of the individual mandate meant that everyone had a responsibility to insure themselves, thus, bringing more money into the insurance industry eventually reflecting in lower premiums for individuals. It also allow for the coverage of pre-existing conditions because more people will be involved in the program. Mrs. McCaskill’s method raises questions about whether pre-existing conditions and other important aspects of the Health reform will be implemented if individuals choose not to participate.
As Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) expressed his concerns with this idea, saying that altering the mandate will weaken the bill. He said;
“You’d have to look at the specific proposals. The bottom line is that if you change the mandate, one of two things will happen: Many of the good things in the bill will not be there, such as pre-existing conditions, or premiums will go way, way up.”
The individual mandate is under attack by Republicans as unconstitutional, although when the idea was first floated in 1993 for then president George Bush, they were all in support of the idea. Mr. Mark Pauly, the original author of the now controversial idea said questioning the mandate’s constitutionality was never the issue when it was first introduced, saying;
“I don’t remember that being raised at all. The way it was viewed by the Congressional Budget Office in 1994 was, effectively, as a tax. You either paid the tax and got insurance that way or went and got it another way. So I’ve been surprised at that argument.”
In a recent interview conducted by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, with one of the original authors of the individual mandate – the piece of language in the health care reform bill that requires Americans to purchase health insurance, but is attacked by Republicans as “unconstitutional,” – was asked if the constitutionality of the mandate was ever questioned back in 1991 when the term was first used.
Mr. Mark Pauly, who was the lead author of a Health Affairs paper, was given the job to come up with a way to persuade President George H.W. Bush to adopt a health care policy where all Americans will be covered, while keeping the private health care providers in charge of the industry. The individual mandate was seen as the only way to accomplish this feat.
The question was asked by Mr. Klein; “Was the constitutionality of the provision a question, either in your deliberations or after it was released?” Mr. Pauly answered;
“I don’t remember that being raised at all. The way it was viewed by the Congressional Budget Office in 1994 was, effectively, as a tax. You either paid the tax and got insurance that way or went and got it another way. So I’ve been surprised at that argument. But I’m not an expert on the Constitution. My fix would be to simply say raise everyone’s taxes by what a health insurance policy would cost — Congress definitely has the power to do that — and then tell people that if they obtain insurance, they’ll get a tax break of the same amount. So instead of a penalty, it’s a perfectly legal tax break. But this seems to me to angelic pinhead density arguments about whether it’s a payment to do something or not to do something.”
Opponents of the law, which they have affectionately dubbed ‘ObamaCare,’ states that the law violates the Commerce Clause in the constitution, which, according to Article 1 Section 8 Clause 3 states that Congress shall have the power to: “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”. This its opponents claim, does not give congress the power to mandate commerce, or to make anyone buy insurance, thus, its unconstitutionality.
Proponents claim that the power given to Congress through the Commerce Clause of the Constitution is a grant of power, not an express limitation on the power of Congress to regulate the economy, thus, the law is giving Congress the power to improve the economy through the individual mandate and is therefore constitutional.
This ongoing debate prompted the next question from Mr. Klein, “…whether the individual mandate is a penalty for economic inactivity or whether it’s part of a broader system of regulations affecting a market for health care that we’re all participating in.” Mr. Pauly answered;
I see it in the latter way. We thought it was a good idea to do everything possible to encourage people to get insurance. Subsidies will probably pick up the great bulk of the population. But the point of the mandate was that there are a few Evil Knievals who won’t buy it and this would bring them into the system. In our version, the penalty was effectively equal to the premium of a policy. You paid the penalty and you got the insurance. That’s one of my puzzlements here: In the new law, the actual level of the penalty is quite small compared to the price of a policy. It’s only about 20 percent of the cost of a policy
In short, at the time this ‘individual mandate’ was implemented and presented to a Republican president, the common wisdom was that it would keep the government out of the healthcare sector. Requiring people to buy healthcare as the mandate did back in the early nineties, insured a larger portion of Americans and eliminated the need for a single payer government run option.
Because the private sector would benefit from the increased policies sales the individual mandate provided, Republicans signed on to the measure. Democrats on the other hand did not approve of the measure.
So why now the debate on the constitutionality of the individual mandate coming from the right? Simply put, there is now a Democratic President in the White House, and although he and other Democrats have now seen the need for the individual mandate as a way to allow the private sector to offer health care to all, Republicans now have a change of heart. So the debate, childish as it is, continues…
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