Friday, June 26, 2015

Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare


The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the nationwide availability of tax subsidies that are crucial to the implementation of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, handing a major victory to the president in a 6-3 ruling.  The 6 are: Ginsberg, Kennedy, Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagen and Breyer voting to uphold Obamacare. The 3 are: Scalia, Thomas and Alito voting to dissent.
 
The 2012 Supreme Court Opinions ruling 5 to 4 that Obamacare is a tax is at:
Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion. Here are some of the highlights:
Worst of all for the repute of today’s decision, the Court’s reasoning is largely self-defeating. The Court predicts that making tax credits unavailable in States that do not set up their own Exchanges would cause disastrous economic consequences there. If that is so, however, wouldn’t one expect States to react by setting up their own Exchanges? And wouldn’t that outcome satisfy two of the Act’s goals rather than just one: enabling the Act’s reforms to work and promoting state involvement in the Act’s implementation? The Court protests that the very existence of a federal fallback shows that Congress expected that some States might fail to set up their own Exchanges. So it does. It does not show, however, that Congress expected the number of recalcitrant States to be particularly large.
 
Faced with overwhelming confirmation that “Exchange established by the State” means what it looks like it means, the Court comes up with argument after feeble argument to support its contrary interpretation. None of its tries comes close to establishing the implausible conclusion that Congress used “by the State” to mean “by the State or not by the State.”
Comments
So, Roberts interprets State to mean government, any government including the federal government, when it is clear that it meant a State, like Oregon or Maryland.
Obamacare Coverage is a bad deal. You pay for coverage you will never use, so you overpay. Individual deductibles are $3000 per person per year.  Premiums for a family of 5 costs $750 per month or $9000 per year. Premiums are going up. Families would do better by putting $9000 per year in a medical IRA. If a family member needs expensive $200,000 treatment, fly to India and get it done for $50.000. Don’t go to a hospital, use home health care.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
 

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