Court rRuling on Obamacare

[Maxwell]

A very pertinent observation. To drive in the US (and most anywhere) you MUST have car insurance. So is your government ignoring the constitution when it insists on this?

Well, that's certainly an original argument. I mean it's not as though the Obama administration tried to coin it--and failed miserably in doing so.

Auto insurance is not subject to a federal mandate. It's a state by state issue. And there's a co-pay to boot. People don't have to rely on a government run insurance organization. Driving is, after all, a voluntary act. As such, that's why it covers damage done to the person you hit, and not to yourself--which establishes a wide margin of difference between the two issues. This isn't even mentioning that insurance is priced to risk. Depending on your location and history, premiums go up or down. That's not correlative to a fixed single payer system.

[buttslinger]

Nobody believes the insurance companies are going to reduce their rates if Obamacare is overturned. If millions of people drop health insurance because it gets too expensive, the taxpayers will foot the ER bills, not them.

[onmyknees]

Nobody believes the insurance companies are going to reduce their rates if Obamacare is overturned. If millions of people drop health insurance because it gets too expensive, the taxpayers will foot the ER bills, not them.

Curious then why the Health Insurance Companies were either silent, or came out in favor of ObamaCare. I'm inclined to think they got a backroom deal from Sebilius and Obama just like the "Corn husker Kickback".

Yes...you're correct ...which is all the more reason why ObamaCare is illegitimate. You can't pass the most profound piece of social legislation in 100 years with zero input or zero votes from the opposition party representing 45-49% of the electorate. There has to be consensus. This is why Obama is neither a statesman nor a leader in the spirit of Slick Willie.
Speaking of social issues, here's a conundrum for you progressives...you tell me that the majority of citizens now are in favor of gay marriage and you want legislation to reflect that, and you want it now. Yet when I tell you 60 % of Americans oppose Obamacare for a variety of reasons, you either have no answer...or dismiss them as selfish know nothings. You can't have it both ways, yet you continue to try.

[trish]

I'm inclined to think...

Neither an argument nor the truth.

...zero input ... from the opposition party

Not so. If it weren't for GOP input we'd have single payer instead of a mandate.

[onmyknees]

Neither an argument nor the truth.

Not so. If it weren't for GOP input we'd have single payer instead of a mandate.

Wrong ( as usual) Obama caved on that on his own. Do the research....he didn't get any GOP votes, and he didn't need any. He would have never got Ben Nelson and Landreaux had there been single payer.

Remember that sham of a health care summit that was televised ? He assured the country he would consider Republican suggestions. When asked weeks later had anyone from the Obama Admin had ever contacted any of the GOP representitives at the meeting.....every one said the meeting was the first and last time they ever discussed health care with Obama or his team . The evidence of that would be the final draft. Not one Republican idea made it. It's his ...he owns it...thus it is rightly named "Obamacare"

[trish]

Wrong again. You are not inclined to think. Moreover you're forgetting about the bipartisan Senate committee on healthcare reform.

[onmyknees]

Have you noticed the absolute incredulity of liberal pundits over the seemingly rough time Obamacare got at the High Court ? Tingles Matthews was in shock, turned dilusion...CNN's Jeffery Tobin was melting down right before our eyes, Nina Totenberg..., The NYT....it's mass hysteria. It's fall down funny....really it is..

John Podhoretz writes about the psychic shock when The Cocoon falls apart.

They’re so convinced of their own correctness — and so determined to believe conservatives are either a) corrupt, b) stupid or c) deluded — that they find themselves repeatedly astonished to discover conservatives are in fact capable of a) advancing and defending their own powerful arguments, b) effectively countering weak liberal arguments and c) exposing the soft underbelly of liberal self-satisfaction as they do so.
That’s what happened this week. There appears to be no question in the mind of anyone who read the transcripts or listened to the oral arguments that the conservative lawyers and justices made mincemeat out of the Obama administration’s advocates and the liberal members of the court.
This came as a startling shock to the liberals who write about the court.

[trish]

No, haven't noticed. Apparently incredulity is in the eye of the beholder. We all knew the court would split down party lines and the conservative judges are well known assholes.

[Prospero]

Onmyknees describes Obamacare as "....the most profound piece of social legislation in 100 years."

What about civil rights legislation? I guess to the Conservatives the only legislation they feel to be genuinely earthshaking is that which might challenge big business?

[BluegrassCat]

Onmyknees describes Obamacare as "....the most profound piece of social legislation in 100 years."

What about civil rights legislation? I guess to the Conservatives the only legislation they feel to be genuinely earthshaking is that which might challenge big business?

He just compulsively sodomizes the truth. Prohibition, Ending Prohibition, Women's Suffrage, Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, all less important than Obamacare, apparently.

And of course either party can pass new laws with 0 out-party support. It's ridiculous on its face to say otherwise.

The most absurd thing is that Obamacare is a conservative idea! Developed by the ultra right-wing Heritage Foundation, advocated by the GOP leadership a decade ago, and implemented by a Republican governor at the state level. We've always known that the SCOTUS is ideological but this tests how partisan they are. Will they vote against a conservative plan to spite a Democratic president? I still have some hope that Kennedy and maybe even Roberts care enough about the legitimacy of the Court to rule on principle but we'll see. After all this is an extremely conservative Court; 4 of the 5 most conservative justices of the past 80 years are on this bench while none of the justices are in the top 5 of liberal justices (Ginsburg is ranked 10).

The law is plainly constitutional. Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce (which Healthcare clearly is) and has the power to levy taxes (which is how the mandate is enforced). End of story. Anyone who brings up broccoli is uninformed or intellectually dishonest.