Obamacare is "constitutional"

[geronimotwo]

what happened to the clause in the healthcare bill that said essentially "if any part of this bill is found to be unconstitutional, then the whole law will be revoked."?  was that the only part removed by the court?

[birdman]

Hmm...neato.  If I decline employer coverage (meaning they would give me cash instead), and pay the fine, and then sign up for insurance if something happens, I can actually take home more money.  Word.

And I bet my company (who is self-insured) would REALLY rather pay $2k a person than pay what we do for insurance now.  

Everyone is so boned.

[Perd Hapley]

My health insurance costs have already increased dramatically. Dramatically.

what happened to the clause in the healthcare bill that said essentially "if any part of this bill is found to be unconstitutional, then the whole law will be revoked."?  was that the only part removed by the court?

I believe it was the other way 'round. A law is not "severable" unless it specifically says so. Here's an article about it:

http://blog.law.cornell.edu/healthcarecases/2012/03/12/severability-preview-national-federation-of-independent-business-v-sebelius-11-393-and-florida-v-department-of-health-and-human-services-11-400/

[birdman]

Wait, it's worse than that.
An employer only pays a penalty of $2k on each uninsured, AND subsidized (AGI below $88k for a family of 4) employee.  

So, let's say a company is a large defense contractor with 50k employees, where the median salary is in the 70-80k range.  That means if they didn't offer any insurance, it would cost them $50M a year in penalties.

Considering most companies (like the one above) will give you about $3-4k a year for not using their insurance, we can make the assumption they spend about $150-200M for that benefit (they are self-insured).

And the employee contribution for a family of 4 is about $4-5k/yr

So the company could realize a net profit of. $100-150M by simply not offering insurance anymore.  

Now that unsubsidized $88k for a family of 4 household has to buy insurance (kaiser quotes $11k annually) and gets ROYALLY SCREWED.  

Or, they could simply pay their own penalty, $2k/yr at that income level, pocket the $2-3k difference between their current contribution and the penalty, use that for day-to-day medical stuff, and just sign up, use, and cancell, insurance if they need it.  In that case, the insurance company gets royally screwed, and goes out of business.

[Waitone]

Listening to Mark Levin and what he says does nothing calm my fears of a national lurch into corporatism (aka fascism).  Levin said 4 count'em 4 justices were prepared to kill the entire legislation based on the commerce clause and individual mandate.  All Roberts had to do was agree and Obamacare was a bad dream.  Instead Roberts resorts to an argument that was not even debated during hearings.  Roberts argumentation portends really bad things in the future. 

The whole unfortunate episode reminds me of a quotation by Carroll Quigley in "Hope and Tragedy"

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.

http://www.dailypaul.com/62900/carroll-quigley-quote-on-the-two-party-system 

Roberts was a republican appointment.  He was to serve as a restraint on an outta control liberal court and he turns out to be the very thing he was supposed to counteract.

I think we as a society have just slipped the collar around our own necks and hooked the leash to it.

[RoadKingLarry]

The USA has been in a unrecoverable death spiral for a while. SCOTUS just eased the nose over a little further and advanced the throttles a little. In the long run it won't make that much difference other than maybe speeding up the final collapse.

[MicroBalrog]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/28/is-the-supreme-court-s-health-care-ruling-a-turning-point-in-constitutional-law.html

[ArfinGreebly]

Been doing a little reading.  Well, okay, maybe more than a little.

There seem to be some subtleties to this decision that take a little time to sink in.

Do some reading, guys.

I'm not a big fan of the word "nuanced" but it's clear there's more to Roberts' play than initially meets the eye.

[Perd Hapley]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/28/is-the-supreme-court-s-health-care-ruling-a-turning-point-in-constitutional-law.html

I prefer this one, but only for the comedic value of calling Al Sharpton an "expert." 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/28/the-supreme-court-ruling-on-obamacare-11-experts-weigh-in.html

[Ron]

Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the opinion:

“We possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."

[seeker_two]

I'm not a big fan of the word "nuanced" but it's clear there's more to Roberts' play than initially meets the eye.

Roberts' job isn't supposed to be "nuanced"....it's to decide if a law is constitutional or not. And he & the other four failed miserably.

The states may be the last hope to stop this thing....

 http://washingtonexaminer.com/gop-governors-vow-to-ignore-obamacare/article/2500862

[HankB]

I don't understand all the specific details, but my employer went through the bill and decided to eliminate retiree medical coverage, even for current retirees, the reason cited being Obamacare. Claimed it would sharply increase costs.

Now there's a complicated plan in place whereby pre-retirees accumulate some cash in an account which will help them buy coverage should they retire before they're Medicare eligible, and some sort of continuing cash subsidy which will help them pay for coverage under the health care exchanges which may eventually be implemented.

It's all about as clear as mud right now.

* * * * * *

Obama repeatedly insisted the mandate and fine were NOT A TAX. SCOTUS majority said it WAS a tax.

Doesn't that mean we now have a SCOTUS majority that has determined - formally determined! - that Obama is a LIAR?

[MicroBalrog]

Doesn't that mean we now have a SCOTUS majority that has determined - formally determined! - that Obama is a LIAR?

If you need a court to tell you that a politician is a liar, we are in trouble.

[AJ Dual]

Been doing a little reading.  Well, okay, maybe more than a little.

There seem to be some subtleties to this decision that take a little time to sink in.

Do some reading, guys.

I'm not a big fan of the word "nuanced" but it's clear there's more to Roberts' play than initially meets the eye.

I'm in the camp that Roberts indeed was playing "chess" rather than "checkers" with his decision, renaming the penalties as what they were, a tax, and laying precedent to potentially do some major rollback of the stretching the ICC has taken over the past century.

However, the other thing he thinks he "won", namely the stability and the sanctity of the SCOTUS in terms of politicization, flip-flopping, and separation/equality of the trimutive of the fed.gov branches, but unfortunately, what he was fighting for was already long gone. And it's disturbingly naive of him to think the activist/Left would ever respect what he did, should they ever get the majority back on the bench.

That said, the ICC alone was too high a price.

[Stetson]

Wait, it's worse than that.
An employer only pays a penalty of $2k on each uninsured, AND subsidized (AGI below $88k for a family of 4) employee.  

So, let's say a company is a large defense contractor with 50k employees, where the median salary is in the 70-80k range.  That means if they didn't offer any insurance, it would cost them $50M a year in penalties.

Considering most companies (like the one above) will give you about $3-4k a year for not using their insurance, we can make the assumption they spend about $150-200M for that benefit (they are self-insured).

And the employee contribution for a family of 4 is about $4-5k/yr

So the company could realize a net profit of. $100-150M by simply not offering insurance anymore.  

Now that unsubsidized $88k for a family of 4 household has to buy insurance (kaiser quotes $11k annually) and gets ROYALLY SCREWED.  

Or, they could simply pay their own penalty, $2k/yr at that income level, pocket the $2-3k difference between their current contribution and the penalty, use that for day-to-day medical stuff, and just sign up, use, and cancell, insurance if they need it.  In that case, the insurance company gets royally screwed, and goes out of business.

And when there are no more insurance companies, raise the penaly to 10k per person and them offer Gov't insurance at 9k a year.....

[longeyes]

Nuance is fine--when you still have an honest social contract.  We don't.  There is no social contract when one side is applying reason and the other side is applying a hammer.  This will be resolved the way all great historical disputes have been.

[MicroBalrog]

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/28/did_john_roberts_switch_his_vote/

It is impossible for a lawyer to read even the first few pages of the dissent without coming away with the impression that this is a majority opinion that at the last moment lost its fifth vote. Its structure and tone are those of a winning coalition, not that of the losing side in the most controversial Supreme Court case in many years. But when we get to Page 13, far more conclusive evidence appears:  No less than 15 times in the space of the next few pages, the dissent refers to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s concurring opinion as “Justice Ginsburg’s dissent.

[longeyes]

He saved ACA--and, for now, Obama--at the expense of the Constitution.  That will be Roberts' "great legacy."

[zahc]

This really is a turning point in constitutional law. I have had a hard time articulating why, but this op-ed came close.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/opinion/a-confused-opinion.html

As a matter of constitutional text, legal history and logic, the power to regulate commerce and the power to tax should not be separated. It is not good for the court or the country that the chief justice’s position in such an important case is confused at its core...

taxation and regulation are close substitutes, so a limitation on one power matters little if the other power is still available. There is no practical difference between ordering an action, and taxing or fining people who don’t do that same thing. If the Constitution limits direct federal powers, it must also limit Congress’s indirect power of taxation.

In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts didn’t come to grips with the two critical early Supreme Court cases that set out the relationship between the powers of regulation and taxation — a relationship that survived the New Deal revolution in understanding the Commerce Clause....Wickard expanded the scope of federal power, but it did nothing to upset the constitutional parity between the taxing and commerce powers...If direct regulation is beyond the scope of the Commerce Clause (as [Roberts] held), then taxation as an indirect route to the same regulation should be off limits as well (as he failed to hold).
 

That's right folks, as bad as Wickard.., Raich..., etc are, at least, until this point, the feds couldn't blatantly use taxation as an end-run around what's left of the commerce clause.

[just Warren]

I wonder what happens if a people come to the conclusion that there is no hope of positive change via the institutions they are supposed to respect. 

[AJ Dual]

Waidaminute...  

TAX bills can't originate in the Senate, (Article 7 Sec 1, of the Constitution) which is where the ACA started... And Roberts just made the ACA a "tax bill" in effect. And may be an additional reason Obama and the Democrats were so adamant any fees or fines in the ACA weren't "taxes".

Did he just massively troll the liberal justices, and set this up for repeal anyway?

I'm skeptical of all the "ZOMG HE OUT-THOUGHT EVERYONE!" spin many conservative pundits and bloggers are now throwing around, but reading through the decision, there's so much more WTF'ery in there that it's making me start to wonder if they're somewhat right...  

ETA... never mind. ACA did "start" in the Senate, but what they did was take some House appropriations bill about housing allowances for .mil families, gut it, and then stuff the ACA "into" it. 

[41magsnub]

Hot air says it doesn't apply:

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/28/say-doesnt-the-constitution-require-tax-bills-to-originate-in-the-house/

[AJ Dual]

Yep appropriation "shell bills" that start in the House, but are completely re-purposed by the Senate is the de-facto compromise, because since the 17th Amendment, the Senators are also directly elected, and therefore also represent "the people" about as much as the House does. 

I was just kind of hoping they'd screwed this one up somehow just as they did by forgetting the severability clause.

[Scout26]

And the spin begins.  Jay Carney, WH spokesman argues that it's not a tax....

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/29/white-house-claims-obamacare-fine-penalty-despite-court-calling-it-tax/

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/white-house-roberts-obamacare-mandate-penalty-tax/story?id=16679772#

[Balog]

Commerce Clause logic is dictum, Tax Clause logic is precedent. I agree Roberts was trying to play cute and not get liberals mad at the court while still being conservative, but to say he succeeded is silly wishful thinking on the order of Dean declaring the WI recall a victory for unions.