Federal judge in Texas strikes down Affordable Care Act

[MovingPictures]

The attorney arguing the case for the Obama Administration denied it was a tax and tried to justify it under the Commerce Clause. Four justices (the always vote for their party Democrats) agreed. Four Conservatives said BS. Roberts-trying to be clever, rejected the commerce clause nonsense but held it was a TAX. well guess what, now its no longer a tax. So it looks like you have four CC expansionists who will support it. Alito, Thomas will still oppose it. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are likely to oppose it, and Roberts position no longer has the one plank he needed to support the AHCA.

I love how you whine about the progressive justices upholding liberal laws, yet in the same breath pretty much admit that the conservative side of the court is out to rule against any and all liberal based policy when they can.

You're dreaming if you think the SC is going to strike down the AHCA.

 

[Perotista]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/14/politics/texas-aca-lawsuit/index.html

Texas...figures.

I don't know what to make of this, outside it is headed back to the SCOTUS. Chief Justice Roberts held Obamacare constitutional because it was a tax. The tax was the penalty. I felt Roberts side stepped the constitutionality of Obamacare in his ruling as he thought it was impracticable to remove millions of folks off Obamacare, leaving them without health insurance, hence his, "it is a tax solution."

I have nothing to back that up, outside of a feeling. I think it is even more impracticable today. But even so, practicable or impracticable should have nothing to do whether it is constitutional or not. I'll finish by saying it is high past time for both major parties to sit down together and come up with a workable solution to healthcare. What that solution is, I don't know. But that is why we elected them, to do a job. That job is to solve the healthcare situation. Both major parties need to get past this use healthcare as a campaign tool, issue, solve it.

 

[Arby]

My post responded to your post that said erroneously the ACA had 11,000 pages for which erroneous reason you wanted a bipartisan commission because you said no one read it to include the legislators who enacted it. I suggested you might read the summary of the 902 page ACA that is written for members of the House and Senate by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress -- it's available to the public of course. CRS does this with bills, laws, subsequent amendments. ACA is also available in full online. Trump's unsuccessful bill of last year introduced by members of congress was 40 pages which sounds good at a nice small even zero number. The one McCain's vote killed. It could indeed have been written by three right wingers here over beers.

Ok, I was wrong.
"What is commonly known as the Obamacare law includes both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA). Since these bills were signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010, various agencies in the administration have published 109 final regulations spelling out how they are to be implemented.

These 109 final regulations account for a combined 10,535 pages in the Federal Register, where the government officially published them."

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/11588500-words-obamacare-regs-30x-long-law

How many bottles of Gin did the Dems go through writing it?

 

[Tangmo]

Ok, I was wrong.
"What is commonly known as the Obamacare law includes both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA). Since these bills were signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010, various agencies in the administration have published 109 final regulations spelling out how they are to be implemented.

These 109 final regulations account for a combined 10,535 pages in the Federal Register, where the government officially published them."

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/11588500-words-obamacare-regs-30x-long-law

How many bottles of Gin did the Dems go through writing it?

It's common that a major bill has several hundred pages at the least.

The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act has more than 800 pages. Now think of all the regulations written pursuant to it -- and to each Act each year. This is but one example of major legislation, the number of pages, the number of words and so on. There's the Agriculture Bill as another example of major legislation that is voluminous in pages of law and subsequent pages of regulations. One could think also of other department and agency laws that enable or authorize programs, such as Department of Commerce, Dept. of Homeland Security and so on. Bureaucracy is a fact of modern life. Minimizing it is good but it is always relative. One's politics for instance plays a huge part in the decision to be either accepting of the basic reality or in rejecting it -- selectively. Consistency is what we might do well to pursue.

 

[Mr Person]

I must admit that in legal terms, that was a nice little end-run done by the administration.

Very sneaky...

Of course, I have to wonder about the judge's decision, since in discussing severability (whether one part can be struck while leaving the rest standing), the focus was apparently on the intent of the 2010 congress that passed Obamacare. That is, in ruling on whether or not the mandate was severable, the judge ignored the action/intent of the 2017 congress that got rid of just that one bit of the law.

Then again, I'm based that on what I've read about the decision. The thing is 55 pages long, which is not how I want to spend a Sunday morning (or even part of it).

 

[Mr Person]

The reason does still exist. Roberts argued the individual mandate is constitutional because you have the legal action of not complying with it (in that circumstance you just pay a tax):
That is still the case. Congress reduced the required payment to the IRS to $0 if one chooses to forgo buying insurance, it didn't attach any new negative legal consequences. In other words, you can still legally choose to go without health insurance now, just as you could before.

Indeed, it's even easier now, which was the whole point of the change the GOP made.

Which has nothing to do with the declaration that the judge "overturn[ed] what the Supreme Court decided".

 

[Objective Voice]

Ah, so Republicans failed 3 times to repeal Obama care, but they could just repeal one bit of it and effectively repeal the whole thing? That doesn't sound right.

I assume since Republicans removed the individual mandate, the thing that Big Insurance said would help them keep costs down, they basically ****ed us yet again? Thanks Republicans, your governance is ****.

It's not right and that's why this TX lower court decision won't stand. In Chief Justice's decision in upholding the ACA, he said (paraphrased to some extent):

The ACA was not upheld under the Commerce clause nor the Necessary and Proper clause of the Constitution. The individual mandate was viewed by Congress' enumerated power to "lay and collect taxes" as a penalty as "a shared responsibility" under the Direct Tax clause of the Constitution (Art. I, Sect 9, clause 4):

"No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken."

This effectively takes us to the 16th Amendment which reads:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

The court would have ...no basis to tear down the ACA in its entirety. When a court confronts an unconstitutional statute, its endeavor must be to conserve, not destroy, the legistlation.

Therefore, even if the individual mandate was overturned by another piece of legislation, that in and of itself does not render the entirety of the law moot. The individual mandate was merely one of several mechanisms embedded in the law that would have allowed it to be "self-sufficient" financially had it along with other such mechamism, i.e., the Medicaid expansion, the corporate tax, the regional HIEs or health insurance co-ops, been allowed to come into existence WITHOUT Congressional Republicans refusing to implement them OR successful defunding the law itself.

I knew once the GOP was able to strip the individual mandate from the ACA, their next move would be to get a law suite before a conservative court in an attempt to render the law unconstitutional since they (Republicans) could not repeal the law not even when they held power in Congress. The Supreme Court does not have the power to render a law inactive which is what the Texas court means when it declared the ACA "unconstitutional" based solely on one provision of law being voided by another law. It can only rule on the harm the law may have on the constitutional rights of those who may be harmed by the law. Since that "harm" has been removed, the law in an of itself is only voided if Congress uses its enumerated power to revise it or over-ride it by "repeal or replacement". And since it's done neither...

 

[Moderate Right]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/14/politics/texas-aca-lawsuit/index.html

Texas...figures.

California, figures. Every time the left don't like something that Trump has done they go to a California federal court.

 

[Moderate Right]

Ah, so Republicans failed 3 times to repeal Obama care, but they could just repeal one bit of it and effectively repeal the whole thing? That doesn't sound right.

I assume since Republicans removed the individual mandate, the thing that Big Insurance said would help them keep costs down, they basically ****ed us yet again? Thanks Republicans, your governance is ****.

I love watching you lefties lose. And lose. And lose. And lose. Even when you win, it is overturned later.

 

[Moderate Right]

Hyperbole is unbecoming of a reasoned person.

You should probably wait till the Supremes have their say.

I think your problem is in thinking that the other side should be "reasoned".

 

[TurtleDude]

I love how you whine about the progressive justices upholding liberal laws, yet in the same breath pretty much admit that the conservative side of the court is out to rule against any and all liberal based policy when they can.

You're dreaming if you think the SC is going to strike down the AHCA.

well you have one thing on your side-conservative justices are far more respectful of precedent than leftwing ones-its why there is a theory called the leftward ratchet of jurisprudence. But with the tax factor gone, Roberts is going to look like an idiot if he reverses his own view that the CC does not support obamacare. So I guess we will see.

 

[Mycroft]

I think your problem is in thinking that the other side should be "reasoned".

Perhaps. One can hope, though.

 

[MovingPictures]

well you have one thing on your side-conservative justices are far more respectful of precedent than leftwing ones-its why there is a theory called the leftward ratchet of jurisprudence. But with the tax factor gone, Roberts is going to look like an idiot if he reverses his own view that the CC does not support obamacare. So I guess we will see.

That's a good one!

Conservative groups in general just keeping filing lawsuits over and over again, until they change enough judges in order to change the rulings they don't like.

 

[TurtleDude]

That's a good one!

Conservative groups in general just keeping filing lawsuits over and over again, until they change enough judges in order to change the rulings they don't like.

you are ignoring history. the most radical era of jurisprudence in the last 125 years was FDR's second and third terms. for 20 years the Dems were the only group appointing federal judges and when the Federal courts started ignoring 140years of precedent, they had a decade to cement that change into our jurisprudential fabric. When DDE had 8 years of power, he started appointing republican judges but even when they managed to get control of some of the Courts of appeal, they were loathe to overturn cases from the extremely activist period from 37-49. GOP judges respected the radical nonsense of the FDR courts. sadly the FDR courts did not respect the precedent of the GOP courts

 

[Tangmo]

well you have one thing on your side-conservative justices are far more respectful of precedent than leftwing ones-its why there is a theory called the leftward ratchet of jurisprudence. But with the tax factor gone, Roberts is going to look like an idiot if he reverses his own view that the CC does not support obamacare. So I guess we will see.

We've already seen it.

The Texas judge took Scalia's "original intent" and turned it into "present political intent." Which is what original intent has always been anyway. Nothing original in any of it.

 

[TurtleDude]

We've already seen it.

The Texas judge took Scalia's "original intent" and turned it into "present political intent." Which is what original intent has always been anyway. Nothing original in any of it.

what was the original majority and dissent based upon? if you actually understand that, you will realize once the mandate was vaporized, the one argument Roberts used to sustain the law evaporates.

 

[Obscurity]

well you have one thing on your side-conservative justices are far more respectful of precedent than leftwing ones-its why there is a theory called the leftward ratchet of jurisprudence. But with the tax factor gone, Roberts is going to look like an idiot if he reverses his own view that the CC does not support obamacare. So I guess we will see.

Obamacare needs to go and be replaced with single payer.

Anything else is electoral sado-masochism. In fact, I believe conservatism in general is sadomasochism.