Entire ACA upheld by Supreme Court

[pointman]

Originally Posted by Danzig

got home from work and spanish class. figured i'd start looking in my usual spots for more being said on obamacare, and here's something interesting already. and it goes more into what i said earlier-that if states can't be forced (and today's ruling takes away the one big stick to force them) into participating by expanding medicaid, what would that do to ppuca:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health...the_poor_.html

Don’t Celebrate Yet
The Supreme Court’s decision will make it much harder to extend health insurance to America’s poor.
By Darshak Sanghavi|Posted Thursday, June 28, 2012, at 7:45 PM ET

and here's the teeth of it:

"When one understands that the ACA’s real impact will derive from its expansion of Medicaid, the Supreme Court’s decision seems more worrisome. By limiting the federal government’s power to expand Medicaid in many states, the Supreme Court has seriously damaged the liberal dream of universal health coverage. As I wrote last fall, almost half of all people who qualify for free health insurance never sign up, especially in the Southern states where the highest number of uninsured people live. That’s not because inhabitants are lazy; it’s because those states create all kinds of barriers to Medicaid enrollment, since they have to assume some of the costs. The Supreme Court’s decision leaves the federal government without a big stick to beat ornery states like Texas, Florida, and Mississippi into expanding Medicaid, which means it has been left powerless to make sure that poor people get their coverage.

State reluctance to expand Medicaid gets at the core problem in health care today—it’s just too damn expensive and the ACA does very little about that. Currently, the average person consumes $5,000 per year in health care. By simple math, newly insuring 60 million people will cost taxpayers $300 billion annually, a far higher number than many policymakers admit. (For example, health care costs now consume 54 percent of Massachusetts’s budget, with the lion’s share going to the expanded Medicaid, despite massive federal subsidies.) And the dream that newly insured people will take advantage of more preventive services, often touted as a means to cut costs, hasn’t panned out, according to a meticulous new study from Oregon."

...i know the focus was on the IM, because that was felt to be the constitutional bugaboo. but there's far more to the whole thing. by ruling that they can't cut current state medicaid funding, there is NO earthly reason for a state to decide to expand their program, especially with many already suffering budget-wise with their current medicaid outlays vs funding.
then there's the fact, since i've read more on the ruling, that they've slashed the fine amounts-you've just removed a real reason for people to go after coverage. it should cost MORE, not less, to not buy it, if the intent is to get young, healthy, non-insurance buying people to decide to buy it.

so, they didn't remove the heart, but it's still possible it's a mortal blow.

You mean that insuring another 60 million people won't pay for itself? I thought that Obamacare won't add to the deficit and Riot assured us it wouldn't, how could this be? She even gave us a pie chart.