Obamacare Upheld, Roberts Joins the Left

In a shocking (to me, at least) decision, the supreme court has upheld Obamacare. Even worse, it appears that Chief Justice Roberts cast the deciding vote in a 5-4 decision.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-06-28-10-17-22

Roberts is the deciding vote? WTF.

So much for limited government in the United States.

 

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The government has always had the power to tax. My faith in the Supreme Court has not been shattered as I expected.

 

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I still think they are generally biased towards the right, but evidently someone cares about their legacy as well as politics.

 

NBC's Pete Williams reported that Roberts reasoned that “there’s no real compulsion here” since those who do not pay the penalty for not having insurance can’t be sent to jail. “This is one of the scenarios that administration officials had considered that if the court did this they would consider it a big victory,” Williams said.

But in a major victory for the states who challenged the law, the court said that the Obama administration cannot coerce states to go along with the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people.

The financial pressure which the federal government puts on the states in the expansion of Medicaid “is a gun to the head,” Roberts wrote.

“A State that opts out of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion in health care coverage thus stands to lose not merely ‘a relatively small percentage’ of its existing Medicaid funding, but all of it,” Roberts said.

Congress cannot “penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding,” Roberts said.


http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_n...22-supreme-court-upholds-health-care-law?lite

 

Some of it. I'm at work so I haven't had time to read the whole thing. I suppose i can take some solace in the fact that at least the court recognized that there is some limit to what can be justified under the commerce clause and the necessary and proper clause. Also, this is going to energize the right to get out and defeat Obama as the last chance we'll have to kill Obamacare. As evidence of that, Romney raised over $100,000 in the hour after the decision and has re-affirmed his vow to repeal Obamacare .

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/...000-in-less-than-an-hour-after-scotus-ruling/

Here's the judgement:

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf

 

Right, because the right wing of the court is almost entirely political. Even the fact that we can point out right and left members of the court should be considered a breach of trust.

 

I can't believe this shocks you.

Don't you know anything about how the NWO, Global elites, etc. work?

Are you still operating under the illusion of conservatives/liberals, democrats/republicans?

Seriously? REALLY?

With all those cartoons you post in the cartoon thread I would have thought by now that you are wise enough to know how the system works. Government doesn't give a shit about the populace, they care only about themselves. They will do anything, say anything, use any reasoning to justify and expansion to their power. Courts are just another aspect of the system.

 

Early Analysis

Well, here's a piece of commentary from over on my side of the aisle that might actually shed some light on what confuses you, though I doubt it will help your disappointment:

The conventional wisdom, which was neither conventional nor wise, was that the individual mandate was in deep trouble, but it was unrealistic to think the justices would be so radical as to kill every letter of every word of every page of the law. Such a breathtaking move would simply be unnecessarily radical.

And yet, as of this morning, four justices—Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas—insisted on doing exactly that. The four dissenters demanded that the Supreme Court effectively throw out the entirety of the law—the mandate, the consumer protections, the tax cuts, the subsidies, the benefits, everything.

To reach this conclusion, these four not only had to reject a century of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, they also had ignore the Necessary and Proper clause, and Congress' taxation power. I can't read Chief Justice John Roberts' mind, but it wouldn't surprise me if the extremism of the four dissenters effectively forced him to break ranks—had Kennedy been willing to strike down the mandate while leaving the rest of the law intact, this may well have been a 5-4 ruling the other way.

(Benen)​

It's going to take a while to figure out just what happened, but I'll try digging up a Christian Science Monitor article I read a couple weeks ago about the idea that the Court is sensitive to public opinion; I would also add to Benen's suggestion that Roberts' outlook might well have been tinted by Scalia's outright radicalism. I mean, we can go through the detail later, as we plow through it all, but essentially, Scalia released a new book in the last couple weeks—i.e., just in time for this decision—rolling on his own prior Commerce Clause outlook, explaining that the reason he's saying all this now is that he only recently realized it, and cautions that not all future decisions will conform with his new outlook. In other words, it very much looks like he was setting up his justification for hopping the rails in order to strike Obamacare, and then turning his back on his own justification in subsequent cases:

In the preface of his new book, Scalia, writing about himself in the third person, concedes that he “knows that there are some, and fears that there may be many, opinions that he has joined or written over the past 30 years that contradict what is written here,” the Times reports. He notes that while precedent factored into some, in other cases it’s “because wisdom has come late” ....

.... Indeed, in his book, Scalia leaves some wiggle room to change his mind back in the future.

Per the Times, Scalia writes that he “does not swear that the opinions that he joins or writes in the future will comply with what is written here,” in part because “a judge must remain open to persuasion by counsel.”

(Kapur)​

Chief Justice Roberts has some quirks about his judicial outlook, but he has his limits. Given the history of purchase mandates under the Commerce Clause (i.e., dating back to the 1790s), the fact that one vague side in the public discourse (i.e., conservatives in general) seem to have rolled on their own plan, the notion that there is nothing about the Constitution preventing a public option (i.e., where health reform would go next), and the idea that at least one of his conservative counterparts on the Court was nakedly playing politics, the idea that Roberts felt he only had one direction to go doesn't seem so strange.

But, yes, it will take some time with the Opinion and Dissent before we can figure out just how this decision came together.

But in terms of your WTF inquiry: Is it possible, in your opinion, that Chief Justice Roberts simply did the right thing?

Because some people are going to suggest that part of your shock results from believing in the conservative outlook, which so many of us have denounced as "The Bubble", or otherwise suggesting a removal from reality. And it's entirely possible that you based your expectations on bad information coming down that vine.
____________________

Notes:

Benen, Steve. "How far the four dissenters were willing to go". The Maddow Blog. June 28, 2012. MaddowBlog.MSNBC.MSN.com. June 28, 2012. http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_ne...ow-far-the-four-dissenters-were-willing-to-go

Kapur, Sahil. "Scalia Reverses Himself: Now Disagrees With Key Precedent Supporting Constitutionality Of Health Care Reform". Talking Points Memo DC. June 18, 2012. TPMDC.TalkingPointsMemo.com. June 28, 2012. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...ilburn-raich-constitution-commerce-clause.php

 

I was also a bit surprised at that initially. I have some suspicion that he recognized that a party-line vote invalidating a major act of Congress - and the sitting President's signature legislative achievement - in an election year would be a bridge too far in terms of politicization of his Court. It's already seen as politicized, and this was likely his last, best chance as the new Chief Justice to strike out an independent position for his Court.

Or maybe that was just his honest judicial opinion, who knows.

? The power of the Federal government to levy taxes implies the end of limited government? I didn't think that you were in that woo-woo camp with Michael, et al.

 

I will confess that the grounds upon which he choose to uphold the individual mandate and thus the entire law were the most reasonable ones he could have found. If the decision was 6-3, I could understand Roberts flipping so that he could write the judgement and limit the damage. But 5-4? Unbelievable.

 

What do you care? You want to bring on the end times.

 

Sure - but is he wrong to do so? I'd contend that the court has been highly politicized since at least Roe v. Wade, if not longer.

Possibly. Although that's understandably cold comfort when the ruling in question goes against one's preferences.

 

As much as you take umbrage in the decision, Mad A.W., I take umbrage in all the needless distraction from public business the Right is generating over it, and the detraction from the features in the law Obama intended to see passed, and as voters had hoped.

As for Roberts and politics, he may have just spared the Court from derision in an era of its most politically charged sessions in a long time.

As for feeling like the Supreme Court represents Big Government: you think Conservatism is the antithesis to that? Besides, There have been a whole slew of Right-biased courts during your lifetime. There's been a Republican advantage in stacking the Court, and the addition of Roberts and Alito was particularly serendipitous, and an example of erosion of the Justice Department in general (you remember the scandal-ridden Bush years?).

Don't forget how that same Big Government represented the Right. Consider how Ted Kennedy put it, concerning the confirmations:

Now that the votes are in from their first term, we can see plainly the agenda that Roberts and Alito sought to conceal from the committee. Our new justices consistently voted to erode civil liberties, decrease the rights of minorities and limit environmental protections. At the same time, they voted to expand the power of the president, reduce restrictions on abusive police tactics and approve federal intrusion into issues traditionally governed by state law.

The confirmation process became broken because the Bush administration learned the wrong lesson from the failed Bork nomination and decided it could still nominate extremists as long as their views were hidden. To that end, it insisted that the Senate confine its inquiry largely to its nominees' personal qualities. (etc.)​

Roberts and Alito Misled Us

I listened to the full hearings of both nominees and it was pathetic how they evaded the questions.

As for the issue of the ACA, and your basic complaints about it: (1) you are obligated to carry auto insurance, and you presumably never took umbrage at that, or having to pay homeowner's and/or hazard insurance, or any other number of laws imposed on you. Are those all imposed by Big Government? (2) As for the belief that this is a Robin Hood law: the "redistribution of wealth", that is, "the beneficiaries non grata" are people who would have to rely on county hospitals for their entire health care regimen. To date, I've never heard a Conservative retort to this two very central questions.

Finally, I agree with the opinion of the Court, as I've heard it so far, as a matter of law. The "mandate" is just a tax issue. There's dozens of others (I don't see you protesting the mortgage or dependents deductions, etc.) So really, there never was a meritorious claim to begin with.

And there of course you're just conceding that an entirely political response from the Court is within your comfort zone for Big Government.

 

Maybe. Although, that is less a matter of defeating Obama, than of taking control of Congress.

Er - you realize that Congress can simply change this law any time they see fit, right? That you have a literally unlimited number of chances to elect a Congress that will do so, every two years from here to eternity?

Are you assuming that once Obamacare has fully taken effect, it will be politically popular and so unassailable? Are you assuming that future generations won't want to repeal it? I can't conceive of any reason why you'd hold that this election is your last chance to attack this law, that doesn't itself undermine the putative wisdom of such an attack.

That actually sounds kind of small-change to me. What's his normal rate of fundraising at this point in the campaign? I would have expected something in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions.

 

I have not met anyone that agrees with this healthcare law, however I still don't think the majority should be able to induce fines on minority solely because they follow it.

There is no reasoning behind forcing people to buy health insurance, it will not lower costs. Car insurance hasn't lowered from what I've seen it's still the same price it was before they mandated everyone buy some. All this law will do is alienate people from bringing their business here or even migrating here from elsewhere.

Why would an immigrant decide to move to the USA to live if they have to buy health insurance? But I have more questions than this.......

What if I want to quit my job and thus would not have health insurance or a means to pay it? Under this law they force me to change my free will.

Everyone has a right to quit their job without being fined for doing it, this law demolishes free will and forces compliance.

How many of your parents or their parents quit their jobs and went without health insurance for the time it took to find another one? And what might have happened if this law existed then!

This law is unjust at it's core and will never lower costs simply allow insurance to raise them indefinitely. I am appalled and disgusted by such a pathetic thing as this unjust law!

 

Well, those requirements are all imposed by states, and not the Federal government.

But, yeah, it is weird that the big government paranoia is so narrowly focussed on Federal actions, and never seems to have anything to say about state powers, even when (all of) the states are doing things that are at least as "Big Government."

Chalk it up to the whole "States' rights" embrace of racism - they need to keep the spotlight on the Federal government to distract from the fact that they want states to be able to oppress minorities. There's nothing "small government" about segregation, Arizona's Nazi immigration laws, mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasounds, etc.

Yeah, the entire argument against that point rests on mere semantics - the law doesn't call it a "tax," even though it's functionally indistinguishable from such. Fortunately, there's one lone conservative Justice who isn't so cravenly partisan that he'll ignore the very definition of taxation in order to engage in naked judicial activism. Would that we could ever see the slightest hint of any serious principle from the likes of Scalia, Thomas or Alito.

 

Yes, there is. If you want to address it in some way, you're welcome to do so. But to simply assert that it does not exist merits only derision.

Again, you can present your critique of the expected effects on costs if you want. Naked assertions do not generate any respect.

Interesting analogy - do you have any data to support that assertion, and can you explain how the car insurance market is and is not comparable to the medical insurance market?

High standard of living (including good health care), job opportunities, nice lifestyle - the same reasons immigrants have always moved here. Where are they going to go to get a better deal, exactly?

People who cannot reasonably afford to buy insurance are explicitly excempted from the individual mandate.

Also when you quit a job that was providing you health care, you are eligible to buy extended coverage for six months for a cheap price through a program called COBRA, in order to cover you until you find a new job. If your plan is to not find a new job, and simply be really poor, then the mandate doesn't require you to buy insurance - you'll be living on welfare anyway and so probably eligible for MedicAid.

No, it does not.

I know of very few people who have ever quit a job without having already found a new one. Of that handful of people, none of them went without health insurance. They either bought COBRA extensions, or purchased private policies.

It would have made no difference.

Your reasoning for that assertion relies on obvious, basic misunderstandings of how the law functions, and so is not convincing.

You have presented nothing in support of this assertion.

 

You are laboring under many errors regarding this law.