Judge throws out Obamacare
The Democratic establishment is all-in on Obamacare. So this ruling is going to be hard to swallow.
An explosive court ruling to wipe out Obamacare has revived the acrimonious health care battle in Washington and tossed a political bomb in President Donald Trump’s lap as he gears up to run for re-election.The case may not be resolved in the courts before 2020, legal experts said, which could make it a defining issue in the race for the White House and Congress.
Democrats immediately jumped on the Friday night ruling to warn that health care coverage for millions of Americans was at stake due to the Republican-led lawsuit that sought to void popular parts of Obamacare, including protections for pre-existing conditions and a ban on annual lifetime limits.
Wow, but not surprisingly, ObamaCare was just ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL by a highly respected judge in Texas. Great news for America!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2018
The NY Times and Vox was quick to declare the ruling a joke, that it will be swiftly overturned.
I'm not convinced.
Politico's spin on this development was that this was bad for Medicare For All.
Congress was ready to move on from Obamacare.The midterm elections took repeal off the table, and Democrats were gearing up for a party-defining fight over “Medicare for All.” But Friday night’s ruling by a federal judge in Texas that the Affordable Care Act must be scrapped once again puts the law front and center when Democrats take back the House just weeks from now.
Uh, no.
That makes no sense.
If there is questions about the legality of Obamacare then it makes more sense to move onto the unquestionably legal MFA.
OTOH, a partisan battle over Obamacare would be good for the establishment.
Deep-pocketed hospital, insurance and other lobbies are plotting to crush progressives’ hopes of expanding the government's role in health care once they take control of the House. The private-sector interests, backed in some cases by key Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign alumni, are now focused on beating back another prospective health care overhaul, including plans that would allow people under 65 to buy into Medicare.
This sets up a potentially brutal battle between establishment Democrats who want to preserve Obamacare and a new wave of progressive House Democrats who ran on single-payer health care."We know the insurance companies and the pharma companies are all putting tens of millions of dollars into trying to defeat us," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who co-chairs the Medicare for All Congressional Caucus. "Which I take as a badge of honor — that they’re so concerned about a good policy that they're going to put so much money into trying to defeat it."
“We want to continue promoting the idea of accessibility and improving the Affordable Care Act. That should be the primary goal that we have.”
- incoming Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.)
The one group that this is bad news for is the GOP.
The worst thing that can happen to Republican-voting working class whites is to actually get what they've been voting for.
Comments
Interesting.
Watch how the Democratic elite seize on this threat to ACA to cut off the growing call for Medicare for all from within their own party and to re embracing the ineffectual incrementalism (by design) of the ACA. Of course the Republican meanies, and their Russian Co-conspirators, are reenforced as the greater evil which must be resisted - hair on fire.
Meanwhile, back at Republican headquarters, plans are being made to take advantage of the disarray among Democrats on their multiple health care positions to cast them as the incompetent political version of the Keystone Cops.
All of this, of course, will overshadow and obscure the growing income and wealth inequality, our march toward an increasingly militarized foreign policy, and our insistent refusal to address in any meaningful way the very real existential threat of our warming planet to virtually all life forms.
Interesting times indeed!
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
Hmmm. The SCOTUS expressly upheld the individual mandate,
requiring individuals to buy something from a private vendor) as a constitutional exercise of the taxing power, while invalidating the provision that caused states to either participate in Obamacare or lose all Medicaid funding as an unconstitutional exercise of the spending power. On reading the majority opinion when it first issued, my first reaction was that this was exactly the opposite of how the SCOTUS should have decided those two points.
That was not a political or personal preference on my part, but as honest a reading of the Article 1 spending power (which carries with it the power not to spend, including on Medicaid); the Supremacy Clause (meaning that all federal law, including statutes, such as the ACA, invalidates inconsistent state laws), the Ninth and Tenth Amendments (reserving powers to, first, the people, and then to states) and possibly the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment (as interpreted by both Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment deprivation of property cases), as I could manage. I have never changed my mind.
This is obviously a decision by a district court, the lowest of federal courts. Of course, all state and federal courts are bound by a decision of the SCOTUS that interprets the Constitution of the United States. However, according to the cnn article, this district court judge relied on changes to individual mandate enacted in 2017 distinguishing the case that he decided from the one that the SCOTUS decided. And, again according to the cnn article, he added that none of the 2000+ page ACA could survive invalidation of the individual mandate.
Although I do still believe that the SCOTUS decided the first case wrongly, I am not a majority of the SCOTUS, which this country has long accepted at having the final say on matters of constitutional interpretation. Moreover, the people elected Obama, who very much campaigned on a national health plan (but one with no individual mandate); a Democratic majority Congress passed the ACA' and a Republican majority Congress nixed over 70 attempts by its Republican members to repeal it, including after Trump became President and Republicans controlled both houses. To boot, federal district court Judge O'Connor did all that via a partial summary judgment.
In all, this is one cheeky federal judge, IMO. Guess I have to read his opinion. But not right now. Right now, it's time for a second cup of coffee, maybe a third, followed by seasonal chores of various kinds.
It appears
that the SC opinion allowing the Individual Mandate hinged on a favorable reading of the ACA, finding that the penalty function for non compliance for the mandate could be read as a tax. There was no majority decision that the mandate could stand under the Interstate Commerce clause.
With the recent removal of the penalty for refusing to comply with the Mandate, the Mandate lost the possibility of being considered part of a Constitutional taxation law. The previous SC opinion on ACA indicates there was NOT support of the Mandate under Interstate Commerce clause.
This new decision seems pretty reasonable to me, but IANAL, and it may be rife with other inconsistencies or other conflicts with established case law. What I am most interested in watching is how each of our two major parties will try to spin public opinion on the “threat” to the ACA to their advantage.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
If the federal district court judge is overruled, spin will be
unnecessary.
In the Supreme Court case, both the interstate commerce clause and the tax power arguments were made in briefs and, IIRC, during oral argument. Roberts and Justices nominated by Clinton and Obama were the only votes in favor of upholding the individual mandate. The first draft of Roberts' majority opinion headed toward invalidating both the mandate (as an invalid exercise of the power to regulate interstate commerce) and the Medicaid provision.
Then, Roberts decided to accept that the taxing power to tax was sufficient to uphold the mandate. So, Roberts, and therefore the majority, did consider both powers before upholding the ACA. I think the outcome means that, if the Constitution did not contain a taxing clause, the individual mandate would be unconstitutional because the commerce clause power alone did not sustain the mandate. However, since the Tax Clause is in the Constitution, it makes up for any lack of power under the Commerce Clause. (BS in my opinion, but no one asked me.)
Roberts' opinion cited Wickard v. Filburn, an interstate commerce case from the Depression era, supported his opinion about the individual mandate. I think the decision in Wickard was wrong also. I think FDR's requesting that Congress increase the size of the SCOTUS bench so he could appoint more Justices scared the Court into upholding regulation. Moreover, even in Wickard, no one was forced to buy something from a private vendor. However, again, I am not a majority of the SCOTUS.(From the Wiki article, it doesn't seem that Wickard has been overruled.) So, in all, arguing that the first SCOTUS case on the individual mandate did not decide the interstate commerce clause issue would be a hard sell for me.
The cnn article referred to in my prior post says that the O'Connor's opinion, which I linked in my prior post, but still have not read, relied upon the 2017 changes to the ACA to distinguish the Roberts' Court decision on the first ACA case to hit the SCOTUS.
BTW, Bush nominated O'Connor, but I'm sure O'Connor decided this case objectively, despite his personal politics. /sarcasm
Holder was on Twitter saying
that it was time to quit screwing around and pass Medicare for All. HOLDER?
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
What he Tweeted
(My bold)
My guess is that his version would be very different from the version I now enjoy.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
Medicare For All privatized
Everyone would be forced into Part C policies.
I'm sure that is their dream.
EDIT: for title spelling
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Doesn't that make the car insurance mandate unconstitutional too
Where are those lobbyists?
Beware the bullshit factories.
car insurance
Car insurance is different since you aren't required to have a car (and there's the usual line about driving being a privilege, not a right). But health insurance is required for the fundamental right of being alive.
That's a state mandate, not a Federal mandate
Also, you aren't required to buy car insurance if you don't own a car. In Illinois you can even own the car without insurance as long as you keep it on private property.
The only option the ACA gives you for not buying private insurance is not being alive.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
The Constitution should be burned. There, I said it.
After all, the only thing it really protects is corporate profits and the pockets of the bourgeoisie as they continue their unending plunder of the world's resources.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
That's not the Constitution's fault
Making money = speech and corporations = persons was the fault of conservative judges.
And useless liberal judges went along with it
because they too are right-wing reactionary capitalist pigs. Besides, corporations were declared to be people almost a century before most of us were born, so the system was rigged well before 2010.
Hell, George Washington had no problem using his position as president to enforce his monopoly on whiskey, or screwing over the plebs who thought they'd get something out of fighting his war when all they got was dispossessed by his hired goons and land speculators.
If the piece of paper really was meant to protect the little guy, it wouldn't read as it does.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
No need to contribute, even minimally to environmental
disaster that grows nearer every year by burning the Constitution. Government, at will, simply ignores it or declares that it does not apply.
OK, I've now read the opinion. It reaches the standing issue
issue third (reaching it first is customary); and, for reasons, I don't agree with, finds the plaintiffs have standing. As to the mandate, it notes that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated the "shared responsibility payment, aka penalty, ask tax on failure to comply with the mandate. Since Roberts' majority opinion had said, in effect, that the mandate survived constitutional scrutiny only because it was a valid exercise of Congress' power to tax, the 2017 act rendered the mandate invalid. And, despite the severability provisions of the ACA, the mandate (aka the insurers' bail out provision) was not severable from the ACA. Therefore the whole ball of wax was no good.
So, Democrats snickered at Republicans' making over seventy attempts to repeal Obamacare but failing. Looks like they had the last laugh: While appearing to be only cutting taxes and relieving younger people of legal responsibility to subsidize the health insurance industry, they fixed it so a court would do their dirty work for them without costing any of them their seats for a repeal Obamacare vote.
Democrats played the same game with abortion and equal marriage. And, Republicans raised money for decades on overturning Roe v. Wade. Now, they may finally keep their word.
Two artists I love more every time.
SDMA (Stare decisis, my ass)
Love Fitgerald and Morrison more every time.
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