Entire ACA upheld by Supreme Court
 

Entire ACA upheld 5-4 with Chief Justice joining the majority opinion. Individual mandate upheld as a tax.

I would like to introduce into legislation the new "Direct Deposit Act". Just put all my money in the goverment's account, let them spend it, send me what is left over.:zz:

Here is what I don't understand and help me out here. Most if not all of us have health insurance and the costs are soaring due to other things covering those that are not covered becuase hospitals still have to treat them thus they charge insurance companies more for those that are insured. How is having more people insured such a horrible thing?

a little more detail from amy howe at scotusblog:

In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

From SCOTUSBLOG (the best source):

It will be noted that CNN, in their hurry to announce a decision before everyone else, announced the opposite of what the Supreme Court did as "Breaking news".

there were 4 votes, including justice kennedy, to overturn the entire act.

kennedy wrote the dissent.

Great minds think alike. Scotusblog is the best :tro:

What do you think about all the calls, even from conservatives, for Scalia to resign after his segue into political commentary while reading from the bench the other day? He's really getting "out there".

What will Supreme Court Ruling mean for me?

Click on "Upheld", enter your insurance status, income, marital status, number in household, and get the result of how this will specifically affect you:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...means-for-you/

For example: if you are married, are insured through work, and make $75,000 a year, the ACA does the following to you:

If you are in your mid-50's (26 to not Medicare age), single, make about $30,000 a year, and have no health insurance now because you can't afford it, or have a pre-existing condition insurance refuses to cover - which is about 40 million Americans if you count married:

I do not see the part about owning a small business (or two) that employs around 30 well paid people that opt in or out of employer provided coverage...would not want to publish that.
This is a shock honestly.

It's not J. The horrible thing is the principle that the government can make you buy something. You have no choice here. If you don't want to pay car insurance, homeowners, or income tax, you have a choice. Don't own a car, home or work and you have made a choice. There is no choice here, and what will be the next mandate? Forcing the taxpayers to bailout automakers and financial institutions? Oh, they already did that.

i like scalia's sense of humor during oral argument and his obviously sharp legal mind. i think he went over the line into political commentary in his dissent on arizona. i don't think that kind of dissent helps him persuade other justices and that's all i really care about.

you know what you get with scalia. i don't agree with his judicial philosopy in general but outside of bush v. gore i think his votes are in line with his stated philosophy and aren't overly political. i'd be surprised if he repeats arizona.

The problem is that ultimately those of us that make the choice to protect ourselves have to pay for those of us that chose not to protect themselves anyway. I understand the sensitivity to govenrment mandates but in this case I don't see it as a bad thing.

Only because of the mandate that care be provided no matter what. No other services fall under that type of mandate. My power bill doesn't cover my neighbor if he chooses not to pay because that would be ludicrous and the power company isn't required to provide him power.

Some awful cartoons..
 

One more...Jackpot
 

What is the actual question about employer coverage? If you have to provide coverage or not? No, employers don't have to provide coverage to employees until they are up around 500 or 1000 employees, I'd have to look it up on healthcare.gov

Your employees that opt out of coverage just will have more options to purchase it privately elsewhere.

Here: Go to this link, and click on the following:

You have the exact same choice here, too. Just like income tax, car insurance, you don't have to purchase health insurance, and you don't have to pay the penalty.

Mandated funeral insurance coming next......funeral homes licking their chops.

Happy happy joy joy...a surprise but finally some good news!

unreal, but this is what caught my eye:


But in a major victory for the states who challenged the law, the court said that the Obama administration cannot coerce states to go along with the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people.

The financial pressure which the federal government puts on the states in the expansion of Medicaid “is a gun to the head,” Roberts wrote.

“A State that opts out of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion in health care coverage thus stands to lose not merely ‘a relatively small percentage’ of its existing Medicaid funding, but all of it,” Roberts said.

Congress cannot “penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding,” Roberts said.

The Medicaid provision is projected to add nearly 30 million more people to the insurance program for low-income Americans -- but the court’s decision left states free to opt out of the expansion if they choose.


.....i wonder if states will opt out. if so, how many? and what will that mean if too many opt out? what will that do to the ACA (and this part of the ruling gives lie to the title of the thread btw)?

Too bad I couldn't delay my knee replacement until the ACA consumer protections kicked in - my insurance company couldn't have been able to refuse to pay 6 months after they approved me for the operation, and thus cost me thousands and thousands of dollars out of pocket.

But at least now the insurance companies can no longer refuse to cover me for arthritis and asthma for the next 50 years :tro: :)

Good comments. More fair to Scalia than what I've seen in the press lately. We'll see!

color me surprised that you would think this is good.

OK, I'm thinking green would be appropriate.

Such a shame you have me on invisible. Both HiI'mGod and I posted on that already. For the third time in the thread:

This is a huge opening for single payer healthcare. Once the exchanges get up and running in 2014 (they should have already been up and running so people don't remain uninsured), if costs are still too high after a year or two it's simple to just put Medicare on the exchanges for all ages.

Doing that would eliminate the private insurance companies - so I predict they will do very well on competitive exchange pricing for us.

Capitalism and free market competition - it's a good thing ;)

at any rate, i'm disappointed-the screwing of me and the rest of the middle class will only get worse. and i feel that this could be a pyhhric victory for obama, who has won a battle but may end up losing the war.

most americans hate the law. should be an interesting campaign going forward.

wonder when the next amended cbo report comes out, and what this'll do to our spending levels.

Yeah, now the rich can be taxed until they have nothing left so you don't have to pay anything out of your pocket! How great! :rolleyes:

What a scary decision this really is, there is now really no limit to what the government can do. Wonder how many jobs will be lost over this debacle.

The silver lining for this is that this will be just one more nail in the coffin that is Obama's chances of being re-elected.

Good point, hadn't thought of that...reason they passed it was to piss off most Americans and have them make a right turn...just in time for the election...:tro:

lol
and i hadn't thought of THAT! i doubt that is what produced the ruling tho.


the argument used in the ruling does engender questions for me tho. going forward, what else can the fed now decide is good for us, we must all have, and if we don't they will 'tax'? this just opened up a huge can of worms.
give a pol an inch, he'll take yours and everyone else's too!

The passage of the ACA has nothing to do with taxing the rich. Good lord, that's a crazy statement. Straight out of "Republican Lie Land". No. This is not a $5 billion dollar "tax on America".

And PS: you can't read. I said, " ... and thus cost me thousands and thousands of dollars out of pocket." I paid for my own medical care. Your statement is absurd.

except most of us who do the paying aren't rich. why they didn't just do single payer is beyond me. that ends the health care provider system. that also removes having all those have to make a profit, which also removes that expense.
good lord, who is going to pay for all this now? oh, wait..i know. the same ones who already pay for everything. it just makes that amount grow.

Republicans wouldn't allow it.

The same funding plan as was included in the law when it was passed two years ago, and has been occurring ever since.

Really, who is going to pay for it? I can assure you it won't be the insurance companies.

Since the word tax has been redefined this morning, I guess the Obama method of piling on to the deficit, then falsely claiming you did not add to it with nonsensical pie charts and ridiculous accounting methods, then leaving it for later generations to deal with can now be defined as a tax.

Zig, my sarcasm was aimed at how the board troll looks at it. Of course most of who will pay it are those that work their butts off and can't afford to pay for those that refuse to.

There, there. Your head is exploding.

Don't worry - that is no longer considered an uninsurable pre-existing condition thanks to Obamacare :tro:

My head is far from exploding. You are too stupid to understand why this decision is the actual nightmare it is. Everyone here has already learned that there is no explaining anything to you so I won't bother wasting my time.

Gloat you pig. We will all be back in November when your worst nightmare begins, a Mitt Romney presidency with at least one, if not both, houses Republican.

Naw. Your head is exploding :D

yeah, i know. everyone knows that something had to be done to fix the health care mess.
you'd think more would be unhappy that obama made a deal with pharma and the health insurers to produce this bloated abortion of a health 'fix'. but, hey, why worry? this only will cause current medicaid spendiing to explode-and many states are already hurting with their current budget. so, eventually taxes will have to be increased dramatically to pay for all these 'fixes'.

better to have taken a hit jobs-wise in the short run (bcbs, aetna, humana, etc would all have shut down) and have a proper fix in the long run. but no, let's just make a confusing patchwork of rules and regulations and subsidize a family of four with almost 70k in income, we'll worry about how to pay for it all later.
so, i'll keep paying monthly for health insurance, as i always have. i won't see any price decreases...but there will be a corresponding increase in taxes, because how else will increased medicaid and those subsidies be paid for? it would have been better to just have everyone pay a tax for health care, cradle to grave coverage, because then i wouldn't have hundreds per month going to united healthcare anymore. i'll still have that to pay, and new taxes coming as well.