Obamacare upheld

[TGHusker]

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/06/25/supreme-court-upholds-tax-subsidies-under-obamacare/

 

Do you care or is it meh?

 

Stocks of insurance and hospital companies like the deal as those stocks went up this morning.

 

Cheif Justice Roberts says in the majority opinion:

Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.

 

Scalia in dissent countered:

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.” Using the acronym for the Supreme Court, Scalia said his colleagues have twice stepped in to save the law from what Scalia considered worthy challenges.

“The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says ‘Exchange established by the State’ it means ‘Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government.’ That is of course quite absurd, and the Court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so,” Scalia wrote.

Scalia added, “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’ It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words ‘established by the State.’ And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words ‘by the State’ other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges.”

[Moiraine]

double post

[Moiraine]

I'm happy about it but I can't say it's due to any actual evidence of anything. The problem is everything you hear about the ACA seems biased in one direction or the other. It's either great if you're a democrat or the end of the world if you're a republican. It's been a positive thing for me personally and 3 of my mom's employees can now get health insurance when they couldn't before because they were too sick (lol). But that's anecdotal.

 

I do think all the talk of repealing it (or this attempt to undermine it) is just petty political BS so I kind of wanted this upheld for that reason alone. I loathe the current state we're in where if it's a democrat idea it's automatically voted against by republicans, and vice versa.

[BigRedBuster]

I'm happy about it but I can't say it's due to any actual evidence of anything. The problem is everything you hear about the ACA seems biased in one direction or the other. It's either great if you're a democrat or the end of the world if you're a republican. It's been a positive thing for me personally and 3 of my mom's employees can now get health insurance when they couldn't before because they were too sick (lol). But that's anecdotal.

 

I do think all the talk of repealing it (or this attempt to undermine it) is just petty political BS so I kind of wanted this upheld for that reason alone. I loathe the current state we're in where if it's a democrat idea it's automatically voted against by republicans, and vice versa.

I agree.

 

This is why I have basically stopped listening to or reading political opinions on the subject. It has become absolutely absurd the political arguments over the issue from both sides. The Dems never seem to find a problem and the Republicans lever seem to find anything good.

 

I personally am sitting back and gauging my opinion on personal experience. Both my wife and I are in management positions of companies where we deal directly or indirectly with the healthcare program we have for our employees. My opinion right now is that the idea of the bill is OK. However, there are some things that quite obviously could be changed to make it better and actually functionally more sound. So, the Dems got a bill passed (golf clap for them) but if they think their bill is amazingly beautiful, then I got swamp land to sell them. If the Republicans could ever pull their heads out of their asses long enough to think clearly, they would work to fix the bill instead of these fake attempts to repeal it.

 

Here is an interesting article I happened to read this morning before the decision came down. Yes, I know I said I stopped reading political opinions but the title drew me in.

 

LINK

 

The Republicans have the ability to do good things. Will they? I'm not betting my own money on it.

[TGHusker]

It will be interesting to see how the repub presidential candidates handle this. Some will double down on it and make it their rally cry - which I think will be a loosing strategy. Others will say, its in place, its accepted and verified (by SC) law and there are far more important things to deal with.

[BigRedBuster]

It will be interesting to see how the repub presidential candidates handle this. Some will double down on it and make it their rally cry - which I think will be a loosing strategy. Others will say, its in place, its accepted and verified (by SC) law and there are far more important things to deal with.

I know which of those I would be voting for.

[zoogs]

I'm happy about this, but like Moiraine, it's based not on what I can call a deep understanding of the ACA. From what I gather, the ACA is a step towards the right direction and like most similar efforts, has met with resistance and been hampered by compromise along the way. It is hardly perfect, but more steps need to be taken in the right direction -- instead of undoing the work already done, leaving everybody in a lurch, and having no immediate alternative.

 

Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.

This seems sane. The quoted portion of Scalia's does not. The intent seems clear, and "the State" (as opposed to "the States", explicitly) seems to be able to refer to the federal government as well. Does "State secrets privilege" refer to secrets held by individual States?

 

Given that it's the law of the land, let's try to make it work better, rather than destroy it to make the other party look bad, right?

 

Here's a NY Times article today on the topic. Can someone kind of summarize what the implications are, if states do revert to HealthCare.gov instead of running their own exchanges? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/upshot/obamacare-ruling-may-have-just-killed-state-based-exchanges.html?abt=0002&abg=0

[AR Husker Fan]

There are both pluses and minuses for either position. With a state-run exchange, the states have far greater ability to shape their marketplace as the article noted. That's fine, but it takes far too much in terms of resources for states to build them. In Arkansas, we opted for the federal exchange (although, for various reasons, there is a level of state control that is far greater than other states that opted for the federal model - it's a looooong story). There has been talk of moving to a state exchange, but that has not gained much traction simply due to the cost, time and staff it would take, coupled with the fact that our implementation of the program is unique in the nation and gained us a lot of control of the market anyway. Our model is now being copied by several states - I would be surprised if those states create their own exchanges now. Simply no reason.

[Scratchtown]

I just wanna know why an X-Ray cost's roughly 1200 bucks in the first place....?

[zoogs]

NYTimes Paul Krugman piece summarizing the ACA so far

[BigRedBuster]

Here is a great article on politics of healthcare reform.

 

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/16/7552657/republican-obamacare-replace-plan?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=voxdotcom&utm_content=friday