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More on the Supreme Court healthcare opinion: The court reinforces that individuals can simply...

  • Thursday, June 28, 2012, 10:21 AM ET
    More on the Supreme Court healthcare opinion: The court reinforces that individuals can simply refuse to comply with the mandate, and pay the tax. The Supreme Court's live blog is here.
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    It was not written, however, as 'a tax'.

    Is the SCOTUS now writing Congressional legislation as they wish it were?

    In essence, if the court wants to invent the idea that this was 'a tax', it is not in their jurisdiction. They should throw the law back to Congress to rewrite it as 'a tax'.

    These cretins do not even understand their own function of the court.
    28 Jun 2012, 10:27 AM Reply Like
  •  
    Indeed, very dangerous to rule that refusing to a mandate can be punished with a tax. The door is now wide open to enact anything under the penalty of a tax. A few examples:

    "The Affordable Car Insurance Act": insure your car or face a tax penalty.
    "The Affordable Veggies Act": you must eat veggies every day or face a tax penalty.
    "The Affordable TV subscription Act": you must subscribe to pay TV to watch Congress in action or face a tax penalty.

    And the best of all:

    "The Affordable Everything Act": you must spend all the money you have or face a tax penalty!
    28 Jun 2012, 12:13 PM Reply Like
  •  
    Roberts has implicitly bought the argument of Kagan and other liberals that yes, a broccoli mandate would be permissible, but it's "stupid" and we shouldn't worry that Congress would pass a stupid law. (No laughter, please.) By this logic, why have a bill of rights? Congress infringing on free speech would be "stupid," so let's not worry about it.
    28 Jun 2012, 12:22 PM Reply Like
  •  
    What you also might see is:

    Vote for certain individuals or pay a tax.
    28 Jun 2012, 12:33 PM Reply Like
  •  
    "can simply refuse to comply with the mandate, and pay the tax."

    The thief uses this same sort of logic. "Your money or your life." How fitting in a looter political system.
    28 Jun 2012, 10:36 AM Reply Like
  •  
    America has truly lost its way. The bastion of freedom is now moving towards the trash heap of history as a Euro style socialist nanny state. What a shame!!! I am a grown man and feel like I have just lost my country.
    28 Jun 2012, 10:39 AM Reply Like
  •  
    I have seen this preposterous assertion bandied about by commentators of late--"it's not a mandate because you can refuse to comply with it"--and thus a gun to your head is not a mandate, because you can simply allow yourself to be shot.
    28 Jun 2012, 10:40 AM Reply Like
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    Overruling the mandate was likely to bring into question the constitutionality of auto insuance and workers' comp mandates, social security, disability, and medicare mandates. Or at least requiring paying billions in legal fees to defend those against 'conservatives' in all sorts of courts across America.
    28 Jun 2012, 10:42 AM Reply Like
  •  
    Agree. The Constitution has been dying a slow death for the last 100 years in both the commerce clause and the general welfare clause.

    FDR, then LBJ and now Obama.

    Long live the State!
    28 Jun 2012, 11:29 AM Reply Like
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    No kidding, since 2010 my insurance premiums have increased 114% and total healthcare cost (co-pays etc.) have increased 140%. Next time I see some 350lb fat slob sucking down a slurpy or Big Mac I'll know where my premiums are going. If "they" want to mandate health insurance coverage they should also penalize anyone who smokes, eats unhealthy, doesn't exercise every day, does drugs, etc. In all this "reform" you see nothing about capping health insurance or hospital CEO pay (some are tens of millions annual pay) or capping premiums. Its as though the insurance carriers or hospitals will charge whatever price they want and you have no choice but to comply or you will "breaking the law."
    28 Jun 2012, 10:58 AM Reply Like
  •  
    Next time you see it, slap it out of their hands and spit in their face and say 'Obama says so'

    The first president to officially pit American against american.
    28 Jun 2012, 11:30 AM Reply Like
  •  
    You mean subsidies encourage people not to be responsible for their behavior, and as a result prices are driven up? I wonder where I've heard that before?
    28 Jun 2012, 11:39 AM Reply Like
  •  
    Never mentioned is that the law sets a *minimum* coverage provision, not a simple coverage provision, and that this arbitrary and absurd "minimum" level of coverage includes totally unnecessary and frequently unwanted services. Such a mandate has nothing to do with decreasing premiums and everything to do with social engineering and increasing corporate profits. The Catholic church birth control controversy is only the tip of the iceberg here, and as the power to set these standards rests with unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, even "passing the bill," as Speaker Pelosi enjoined us to do, did not allow us to "find out what's in it".
    28 Jun 2012, 11:07 AM Reply Like
  •  
    Just think about the implications of this on the general economy over the next 5 years... Were going to see unemployment skyrocket and small businesses go bankrupt because of this ruling. Small businesses are going to get hurt the worst.
    28 Jun 2012, 12:25 PM Reply Like
  •  
    Employers who currently offer some insurance coverage but which does not meet the new minimum standards will simply drop coverage altogether, but reimburse employees the amount of their current benefits. These employees will then have to buy more expensive policies in the new exchanges using the extra money as well as their own. These employers will probably end up paying less than they are now.

    Employers who currently offer none will obviously be hit the hardest, and will definitely not offer it now that it costs more.

    I would say that the real loser here is the employee, as this new "tax" is regressive. The less your company currently offers in benefits, the more you will now have to pay.
    28 Jun 2012, 12:30 PM Reply Like
  •  
    It seems there is a 50 employee minimum.
    28 Jun 2012, 12:30 PM Reply Like
  •  
    So expect to see an artifact in the employee size distribution, a la France, whereby there are a disproportionately large number of 49 employee companies and comparatively few 50 employee companies.
    28 Jun 2012, 12:34 PM Reply Like
  •  
    "but reimburse employees the amount of their current benefits."

    Maybe not. If unemployment is high, the pressure on compensation is weak. With lots of unemployment, the employer may just be able to drop the coverage and not have to adjust wages because there are plenty of people lined up to take the job.
    28 Jun 2012, 12:36 PM Reply Like
  •  
    There will definitely be companies who do as you suggest. My comment is based on what I have been told by small business owners when I asked them directly about their intentions.
    28 Jun 2012, 12:38 PM Reply Like
  •  
    Okay, but I would caution against accepting intentions as a replacement for what will finally happen. If you think about it, that's what the ideologues that support Obamacare on this thread are doing. They are assuming that because they intend for something to happen, that their intentions will somehow replace the physics of what will happen.
    28 Jun 2012, 12:51 PM Reply Like
  •  
    Dear uninformed:

    "The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)[1] is a U.S. Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). It requires hospitals to provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. Participating hospitals may only transfer or discharge patients needing emergency treatment under their own informed consent, after stabilization, or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment."

    Thanks to this, all hospital users paid a tax to subsidize the uninsured. Let me see, who was president in 1986?........... oh yeah... Reagan. To Reagan's credit, in those days it was most likely seen as the Christian thing to do.

    So does using a ER as the doctor of last resort sound like a wise use of healthcare $'s?
    28 Jun 2012, 01:32 PM Reply Like
  •  
    No it doesn't, but does growing the government by 25% sound like a solution?
    28 Jun 2012, 01:49 PM Reply Like
  •  
    And look how much healthcare costs have come down because of this.
    28 Jun 2012, 02:22 PM Reply Like
  •  
    Our society is more open and enabling than any time in history, but apparently, there is a growing sentiment that enabling is not good enough, everything should be free and provided on demand. With it, so goes personal responsibility. And with less and less personal responsibility comes many dangers. The Supreme Court did not address the issue of limiting Congresses power to tax, which was of major concern for the Founding Fathers. With unlimited power, Congress can use the power of the purse to force, rather than merely incentivize, the population, for the supposed good of the majority. It's another step towards pure democracy, the rule of the majority, that the Founding Fathers were so fearful of. The rise of populism will ultimately replace the principles of our Republic, that of representation by leaders who are not swayed by the majority, but rather, by individual rights and fundamental principles. We no longer have leaders, we have appeasers. We no longer have elections, we have referendums. We no longer have budgets, we have propositions. Ultimately, everything is being referred back to direct, majority rule. This is something the Supreme Court fails to recognize.
    28 Jun 2012, 02:04 PM Reply Like
  •  
    What we have reaffirmed today is that anyone that wants something free can count on our government to give it to them in return for a vote. It is becoming increasingly clear that the true endangered species in the US is the free minded hard working individual that makes something of value for others rather than taking from others. Eventually we will get to the point where no one will want to work so who will government tax then? I have a business and do not plan any further hiring into the future regardless of the business climate. This is just too damn much government for me.
    28 Jun 2012, 02:14 PM Reply Like
  •  
    So, find yourself a different country with less regulation, no national healthcare, no consumer protection, no programs to help the poor, no unions, where you can run a business free of government intervention, free of bribery and corruption, with a stable government, no central bank, an effective police force and a middle class that can afford your product or service. When you get there, write and let us all know where that is.
    28 Jun 2012, 06:09 PM Reply Like
  •  
    Hendershott sarcasm is easy and I take no offense from it. I use it all the time as well. I am very troubled by where we are heading. Europe is not a good model for us. Most of these issues are addressable with the private market and need government only as the protective framework. This mandate goes right to the heart of each person's civil liberties. We have been told that what the founders conceived for personal liberties is not what will occur. That is unacceptable in my book. Our great great great grandparents (however many greats is necessary to get to the Revolutionary War) fought and died to separate themselves from a domineering central government. how is now any different?
    28 Jun 2012, 06:35 PM Reply Like
  •  
    We are talking about the constitution and the vision of our Founding Fathers. The principles set down over two hundred years ago have served us well, but apparently there is a growing population that could care less about those principles. Rather, they are interested in what has the government done for me lately.
    28 Jun 2012, 10:49 PM Reply Like
  •  
    If we were to adopt the European model it would be single payer healthcare. But at least we would know what we are going to have. What will we have with ACA? More insurance companies selling incomprehensible policies? More providers maxing out the procedure code book? Sounds like the same disaster of a "system" we have now. Europe may not be a good model for healthcare, but neither is the US "system". Recently I had a CT Scan, Xrays basically. The hospital charged about $500, the insurance company only allowed $185 which the hospital accepted as payment in full. This "system" is an opaque, Byzantine, dysfunctional maze of companies trying to max out their positions and profits and governments, state and federal trying to regulate an incomprehensible tangle. To heck with it. Maybe Obama/Romney care is better but it looks like more of the same, only bigger.
    1 Jul 2012, 08:05 PM Reply Like
  •  
    Can you blame these people? The top 1% own over the 1/2 the country's wealth...How is this a democracy to begin with? Where theres money, there's power and votes....So yea, people are pretty bitter about it...because they know their own government took 1 Trillion dollars of their money to bail out the bad bets and the toxic derivatives the big banks still had on their balance sheets... They bailed the banks out at 100 cents on the dollar using my future's money.

    Think about it...and now people are saying the NINJA(no income, no job and no assets) generation is lazy. Its amazing.
    2 Jul 2012, 05:59 PM Reply Like
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