Supreme Court gives Obama second big health care win in ruling upholding nationwide subsidies

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Supreme Court gives Obama second big health care win in ruling upholding nationwide subsidies.

6-4 win, Six are the Chief, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.

This means that individuals who get their health insurance through an exchange established by the federal government will be eligible for tax subsidies.

Opinion is here
supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-114_qol1.pdf

Reuter’s article: Supreme Court upholds broad discrimination claims under housing law reut.rs/1LF4ouu
 
From the majority opinion: “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.”

From Scalia’s dissent: “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”
– leave it to Scalia to come up with something like that :rolleyes:
 
gilliam said:
From the majority opinion: “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.”

From Scalia’s dissent: “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”
– leave it to Scalia to come up with something like that :rolleyes:
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Meh. The whole ACA thing is just a desperate attempt to keep a dying private, employer-based health insurance system alive. Eventually, we’ll do what the rest of the civilized world does and go single-payer, but not until the whole rotten edifice collapses. :mad:
 
This case requires us to decide whether someone who
buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary
gets tax credits. **You would think the answer would
be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be a need for
the Supreme Court to hear a case about it. In order to
receive any money under §36B, an individual must enroll
in an insurance plan through an “Exchange established by
the State.” The Secretary of Health and Human Services
is not a State. So an Exchange established by the Secretary
is not an Exchange established by the State—which
means people who buy health insurance through such an
Exchange get no money under §36B.
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. “[T]he plain, obvious,
and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred
to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the
exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an
acute and powerful intellect would discover.” Lynch v.
Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925) (internal
quotation marks omitted). Under all the usual rules of
interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this
case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to
yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The
Affordable Care Act must be saved. **
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Scalia nailed it.
 
bibcat said:
Meh. The whole ACA thing is just a desperate attempt to keep a dying private, employer-based health insurance system alive. Eventually, we’ll do what the rest of the civilized world does and go single-payer, but not until the whole rotten edifice collapses. :mad:
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I hope that you are correct. ACA is a monumental step forward, but single payer is something that could not be passed in the US. Health and medical special interests just have too much control, sadly.
 
bingbell484 said:
I hope that you are correct. ACA is a monumental step forward, but single payer is something that could not be passed in the US. Health and medical special interests just have too much control, sadly.
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Eventually the entire rotting edifice of private, employer-based health insurance will collapse. Then government will have no choice but to pick up the pieces. That will be the birth of single-payer in the USA.
 
bingbell484 said:
I hope that you are correct. ACA is a monumental step forward, but single payer is something that could not be passed in the US. Health and medical special interests just have too much control, sadly.
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Agreed. But ACA is better than nothing. Glad the Supremes make the correct decision.
 
Good_Tidings said:
Agreed. But ACA is better than nothing. Glad the Supremes make the correct decision.
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But it isn’t. It just keeps a dying system on life-support all the longer, when it should be put out of it’s misery–or allowed to die a long-overdue death.
 
bibcat said:
But it isn’t. It just keeps a dying system on life-support all the longer, when it should be put out of it’s misery–or allowed to die a long-overdue death.
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But too many might have died along with it. I agree with you. It’s not all that great, but maybe it’s a first step.
 
gilliam said:
From the majority opinion: “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.”
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That would be an unwarranted assumption. Government, particularly democratic forms, mostly does things for ulterior motives.
garn9173 said:
It’s unreal, we no longer have 3 separate forms of government, Obama has indeed fundamentally transformed our country.
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Obama didn’t do it. It was this way before his presidency. My only question is when will more conservative folks realize there is no political solution anymore. The system is beyond hope. Republican SC justices are consistently useless. The Republican senate just gave Obama more power and got nothing out of it. The Democrats would have at least demanded something in exchange.
 
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