Dissent: Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito
Tweet of the day:
“@neeratanden: Just a reminder to my conservative friends: If you call the mandate a tax increase, then Mitt Romney increased taxes in Mass as Gov.”This is cute.
So Romney is calling the individual mandate a tax increase. Thing is - as CNN just noted (doh!) - a friend points out that the individual mandate in Massachusetts - which Romney personally championed and signed into law - is structured exactly the same way as the similar requirement in the Affordable Care Act. The Massachusetts penalties are administered through the tax code, labeled “tax penalties,” and are about the same as the fines imposed by the ACA. The penalty is owed on the “individual’s personal income tax return” in Massachusetts, and it's payable to the state Department of Revenue. Justice Roberts concluded that the individual responsibility requirement in Obamacare was a tax because it was payable to the IRS and was collected “in the same manner as taxes.” This logic applies identically in Massachusetts, where the subsidies are structured similarly. Oh Mitt...
It's really amazing how well the GOP lies. Just watched another guy on CNN talk about how "even Pelosi said she didn't have time to read it." No she didn't. I googled it when I heard this lie the other day. What Pelosi actually said was that people would truly see how good the law was when it's implemented and it helps them.
Hey a southern Republican is on TV opposing the law. Now there's a surprise.
The anti-healthcare laws are already on TV. Just saw one with some "doctor" claiming the law hasn't worked. Uh, most of it hasn't even been implemented yet, you liar. Really ticks me off that the GOP keeps using the "it's been around for two years and what has it done?" when the law has yet to be implemented. Also, the liar on TV just said, and I paraphrase: "what if the law doesn't let me keep my patients?" What if? That's your best argument? Amazing.
BTW, Mitch McConnell is a liar. My premiums have not gone up. They went down 10% this year for the first time ever. That's because BCBS had to comply with health care reform's requirement to spend 80% of their income on actual services. So my rates went down. McConnell is a liar to say that the law has forced premiums up.
As for his other claims of inaction by the law, uh duh - most of the law doesn't go into effect for two more years.
These guys are such liars. The media has to hold him accountable for this. You do not get to outright lie about something and have the media simply report is as he-said-she-said.
Here's the text of the Supreme Court's health care reform decision
Democrats need to renew their effort - with new blood - to defend the law. Republicans are coming out with $9m in ads tomorrow in battleground states opposing the law. The larger GOP argument is going to be that you need to elect Republicans to Congress and the White House to repeal health care reform. This decision gives that added momentum. It's time for Democrats, and the White House, to start really defending this law and explaining to people some of the good things it actually does.
More from SCOTUSblog:
In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.Can't wait to hear Scalia's dissent. He's going to have an aneurism. As someone mentioned in the comments, this may explain Scalia's wacky meltdown over Obama's immigration policy. He was ticked off about this decision.
SCOTUSblog:
you can't refuse to pay the tax... The only effect of not complying with the mandate is that you pay the tax.More from SCOTUSblog:
The Court holds that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause, but that doesn't matter b/c there are five votes for the mandate to be constitutional under the taxing power.
The money quote from the section on the mandate: Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.ENTIRE LAW HAS BEEN UPHELD, PER CNN. SCOTUSblog says "Chief Justice Roberts voted to save the ACA."
SCOTUSblog:
"The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government's power to terminate states' Medicaid funds is narrowly read."\
Stay tuned. SCOTUSblog is saying the mandate may have survived as a tax.
Yes, confirmed, the mandate does survive as a tax. Still not clear if legislative action is needed.
The news problem here is that the court hands out paper copies of the decision and everyone is trying to read it now to figure out what it does. A bit of a silly way to do this.
SCOTUSblog says the Medicaid provision is "limited but not invalidated."
