In a highly anticipated case, the U.S. Fifth Circuit of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is unconstitutional. But it stopped short of killing off all of Obamacare, kicking the case back down to the district court for further proceedings.
Healthcare utilization isn’t a choice. At some point in their life, everyone will use it. Most beginning literally before they are born.
Guess we shouldn’t require car insurance, either, clearly that’s unconstitutional.
The new GOP.
Insurance for No One.
Or junk insurance for everyone Big insurance has to make money you know
The GOP has no replacement. This is on them.
We, the American People can invalidate this court’s ruling by our behavior.
There are behaviors which we observe because of mores
Not all mores are laws.
Sometimes the American People are their own worst enemy…but there is an out for us…at least until the 2020 election. After we win, this decision is moot.
Not really. It’s a powerful reminder of how well MoscowMitch has stacked the courts, and that ultimately it’s those unelected lifetime appointee kings who determine our future.
It would take us holding the Senate for a generation to undo all of this damage and have proper jurists in place.
of note - the decision was two to one… the dissenting judge is a senior judge who was a Carter appointee. The other two were a Trump appointee, and a W appointee. Unfortunately, this district is extremely right wing (five trumpsters, 4 GW Bush, 2 Reagan, 2 Clinton, 3 Obama …and one vacancy), so an en banc hearing probably wouldn’t help (and its probably why the case was filed in the 5th circuit to begin with).
Wait until after the election.
I keep seeing a pattern here.
This is, surprise surprise, the dream result for the GOP from a bunch of GOP hacks disguised as judges.
It both invalidates Obamacare but kicks it back downstairs for further consideration of a narrow point by the Texas district court, thereby postponing the enforcement of the judgment. Because if millions lost their health care before 2020, that would obviously cost the GOP a lot of votes. Of course the Appeals Court will in due course rule on the narrow point (severability) in a way that fatally undermines the ACA.
Medicare for All proponents should pay very, very careful attention. A Medicare-for-those-who-choose-it will be much harder for the GOP judicial hacks to overturn than a Medicare that in one fell swoop scraps private medicine. The courts will simply not permit the latter to happen, and maybe not even the former.
I thought the mandate was ok’d by the Supreme Court because it fell under the power of Congress to tax.
And from what we’ve seen, there’s nothing to keep something from re-litigated over and over until a new adminstration has enough judges in place to throw away…anything.
I tend to think like an African sometimes. There are communal actions which could be taken to align with whatever the legal constraints are.
It takes a communal mindset…and cultures are sorted into those more communal and less communal
Too late
A diligent man would have chosen to look for solutions, because his current adversary still believes in bipartisanship.
Goofus will be talking about Pelosi’s teeth, tonight.
Hell, I thought the individual mandate was removed with the tax bill the Republicans passed. If not then than with something else they passed; either way, I was convinced that it wasn’t a thing anymore. Apparently I live in my own little world.
But Doesn’t Pull Plug On Obamacare Yet
Don’t backrupt and kill the poors until after the election, m’kay?
The previous congress set the tax rate in question to $0, so the argument is that there’s no longer a tax hence the whole edifice falls apart. Brilliant, huh.
Insurance companies must be having fun, because for at least the next year they’re going to have to run two entirely separate planning enterprises. One based on the law and all of it details going away in 2021, the other on a democratic house, senate and president reinstating the tax (even at the level of $1) and rendering the suit moot. (At least as I understand it. Even if that wouldn’t work, there’s a long list of other things a democratic administration could and would do, so basically billions of dollars in uncertainty costs for no real return.)
Yep, put Medicare on the exchanges at cost+2% and lets see how for-profit insurance stacks up.
This terrifies me. And millions of others who have pre-existing conditions, I’m sure. My non-subsidized exchange insurance is expensive, but at least they have to let me buy it.
This is not surprising.
Forcing everybody to purchase insurance from private for-profit insurance companies without offering a non-profit public option was a Constitutional house-of-cards from the beginning.
Obama was for a public option before he was against it.