I actually think that the Anti-Injunction Act reading is correct. However, I'm no lawyer so what I think amounts to a hill of beans.

But that's the thing about being the highest court in the land: it's more about what you want to do and your personal thoughts. If they decided today that, as part of the health care decision, all guns are also illegal as they can harm people- they could declare that and no one could tell them otherwise. It would officially be the law of the land. There's no check and balance on them for being unconstitutional (tho I realize in the absurd example I gave, they would need an enforcement mechanism from Congress and that wouldn't be forthcoming but that's why I used the most absurd example I could come up with).

SI

Before Roberts, I would have put money down on the punt option. He seems to like to just get it over with, so to speak.

How does that really help the left? I guess one of Scalia, Thomas, or Alito could die and I guess Obama could get re-elected. But those are long odds as Obama's probably 50-50 right now and the odds of one of them dying is fairly long as none would retired if a Democrat was in office. Romney has equal odds of winning the presidency and Ginsberg is more likely to die/retire than one of Scalia, Thomas, or Alito.

It's a great rallying cry for the right to raise money but if it's gone- that dissipates. So if it's gone, what happens to all the Obamacare rhetoric?

What's the gain for the left of deferring it?

SI

I just meant it's best case scenario, as in either we will get a rejection of the mandate or a push. The push would clearly be better. Of course, if it is a tax then I don't see how it could possibly be unconstitutional.

Link added! (I heard that story so often yesterday I thought everyone had...but ya, it's a real thing).

Between this and the NBA2K version of life that Daryl Morey seems to be playing (Rockets GM), it seems like a gambler's day to watch for me :)

SI

I've been really surprised by the growing sentiment that the mandate or the whole thing would be struck down....everything changed after the oral argument, and I just don't put much into oral arguments as far a predicting stuff. I've seen a lot of tough appellate court questioning that, as it turned out, was really just designed to help the judge write the opinion, and to convince other judges to take their side. (If an appellate judge has really made up his or her mind, they can be less willing to engage in harsh questioning - why give the attorney the chance to have a great counter and swing someone else their way?) But, people who observe the Supreme Court far closer than me seemed to take so much out of how that went down, so I started to believe them after a while. So I have no idea. But I guess I'm still leaning upheld all the way. Though secretly I'm kind of hoping they just hold off until the next term, just to see the reaction.

Edit: I think I'm going to read it fresh from the Supreme Court opinion website, skipping the summary at the beginning, and before I hear the media's interpretation of the holding. Just an intellectual experiment.

Individual mandate survives as a tax, per SCOTUSBlog.

beat me to it

According to SCOTUSblog, Individual Mandate survives as a tax, but they are still parsing through it (complicated to say the least).

According to Scotusblog's live blog, the individual mandate "survives as a tax." They add that it's very complicated, so they're still wading through it.

Apparently, Roberts joined the left to uphold the mandate, but the Medicaid provisison is limited (though not invalidated).

I love that CSPAN 3 is showing Scotusblog with video of the area in front of the Supreme Court and that's it.

SI

I can't wait to see Scalia's dissent on this, after the barn burner dissent he wrote on SB1070.

CNN says mandate struck down.

Dumb question of the day: If mandate survives as a tax, can it be challenged again in 4 years?

SI

So does it survive as a tax, or was that just predictions by people? If so, that's a pretty misleading headline by CNN.

LOL epic fail by CNN, they have now changed it.

From SCOTUSblog:

"The money quote from the section on the mandate: Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it."

CNN is dead wrong right now.

EPIC FAIL! BAD HEADLINE FOR LESS THAN 5 MINUTES! DEATHHHH!

It's easy to poke fun at our modern world sometimes :D

SI

LOL - okay just an epic fail by CNN.

Not surprised that it was upheld - it was carefully crafted in that regard. Really surprised that Roberts crossed over "party line" to uphold it.

* At 10:10, SCOTUSblog had it
* At about 10:12 msnbc had Supreme Court upholds health care mandate
* Also at 10:12, CNN had the wrong headline, corrected about 5 minutes later
* Still at 10:25, Fox News: NObamaCare? What court ruling could mean for your health & money

SI

Yay for America.

from SCOTUSblog

I love it when every "expert," "insider" and "former clerks" are wrong.

Really surprised that Kennedy was in dissent on this. That's interesting.

Le sigh.

As surprising as Roberts upholding it? I think that is the most shocking.

Those are the two most shocking - not sure which is #1 and which is #2. Maybe a tie.

And I would rank them: SCOTUSblog, msnbc, Fox News, CNN.

Getting it wrong is worse than not getting it at all. I'm sure there were a ton of hits in that five minutes.

And so forcefully wanted to strike the whole thing down.

From SCOTUSblog:

And we now have a very, very slippery slope as precedent. It is, effectively, okay for Congress to fine people (now defined as a tax) for not doing something they tell you to do.

Serious question here. What is the main argument against the individual mandate? I don't love that the government can tell me what to buy, but it seems like an acceptable trade-off for the guarantee that my insurance company can't deny a claim based on a pre-existing condition.

You mean like fines for not paying your taxes? That is exactly how this was ruled. There is already precedent for that.

We've had this precedent for hundreds of years.

Did you miss the part where the Founding Fathers taxed merchent seamen in the 1800's if they didn't have insurance?

A lot of commentators speculated that Roberts could be the 5th vote. More than thought Kennedy would. Because Roberts may fall back on precedent. Though that depended on a Commerce Clause view instead of a Tax view... that's interesting part.

So, if I'm reading this right, the AIA was now completely ignored:
Yup, it's a tax.
Yup, it's constitutional even tho we cannot rule until it's been levied.

The Medicaid ruling is even more interesting, in my mind:
If the government says you have to update your policies to continue to get funding, states are basically grandfathered in if they refuse. You get old funding, just not the new funding. That seems wildly inconsistent to me.

Even tho what most would say is "my side" won, why do I feel like I lost when the "win" was "Congrats! Everyone has to buy insurance!"

SI

I am certain that if Scalia ever resigns, Thomas will as well. But instead of writing his own resignation letter, he will just sign his name to Scalia's.

When I was making my predictions earlier (laughably wrong, I might add!), Roberts was the hardest to peg. He genuinely seems intent on trying to do narrow rulings and build consensus and that means he's harder to peg down on big rulings where it's hard to parse them.

SI

:D

SI

I should have trusted my gut and gotten involved in the intrade thing.

I think its a decent strategy (or at least used to be, before today). If the number moves solely because of oral argument, go the other way.

Edit: In other words, I should have bet my congressional medal of honor on the outcome. A medal which of course, I have, or at least, have the 1st amendment right to say I have, if I read one of the other opinions today correctly.

That's the same boat I'm in. Not thrilled with the health care reform law, but as a whole it is far better than what we would be left with were the law to be repealed.

We'd better hope that David Banner isn't a Tea Partier.

I understand people not being thrilled with a mandate, but it really is necessary under a law that requires insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions. Otherwise, no one would have any reason to buy into the insurance plan until they had a condition that needed coverage. This would not be feasible for insurance companies unless (as molson pointed out earlier) they could charge whatever they wanted, in which case it wouldn't be feasible for the government.

So do the Republicans run on:

1. Trying to repeal it all

or

2. Accept health care will be happening and if they want to have some input they need to come up with a plan.

I still think the law does absolutely nothing at all to bring down costs or reform the health care system system. If anything, I predict costs and premiums will still increase, maybe even faster than before on that second part. If costs don't get fix, this could blow up in both Obama's and the Democrat's faces.

I totally disagree. With everyone now covered and preventative care covered without co-pays, I believe this will lead to more conditions being prevented or caught sooner, thus lessening the need for expensive late term care. It will move us from a reactive to a proactive model and this will drive costs down.

Which is why I say this is the best imperfect solution we are likely to get at the moment.

In my dreams they would have thrown out the mandate (thus fucking the insurance companies) and we would end up with single-payer as the only viable solution after an Obama/Dem victory in the next elections (I dunno...maybe some psuedo-nationalization of the big insurance companies or something?), but there was like a 0.1% chance of that happening I suppose.

So I'll take the mandate I guess.

Here's the thing: they already do that. And now that it's mandatory, you have a captive audience so you can charge even more. Frankly, the only way I see out is to have a competing public option with no profit motive. Even the 80/20 revenue rule is kindof a joke but it's really what might limit costs going through the roof. That said, tax lawyers seem pretty adept at eating away at "revenues"

SI

Edited after reading about this. So, yeah. What I envision is accounting practices that'll make Hollywood look legit. In a what, 2000 page law, they'll have an army of lawyers and accountants taking every little loophole they can find to make sure their premiums stay nice and high.

And since we can't buy insurance across state lines, we're stuck with the tiny number of providers to choose from, so it's not like we have competition here.