Health care ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care (aka federal health care reform aka Obamacare). The court ruled that the individual mandate is constitutional and the rest of the law stands. There is some limitation on Medicaid provisions, but bottom line: ACA is the law of the land.
We’re still reading through the court’s decision and will have an editorial about it on Friday.
What do RT readers think of it? How should America proceed now? Should Congress repeal the law? Should it look for ways to improve it? How will the ruling this affect the November presidential and congressional elections, if at all?
Share your thoughts below.
Update 10:40 a.m.: The decision is now online. Click here to read it.
June 28, 2012 - 10:16 AM
I am so proud of Obamam! He did it! He thumbed his nose at the Tea Party and the opponents of the Obamacare and made them look utterly foolish. He joins Bush as a handful of presidents who have expanded the government’s power and forced the market to now treat health as a commodity. If you aren’t well, you could be dead!
Congratuation, Mr. Obama, I’m so proud of you!
Not.
Tea Party – you failed.
Republicans – you failed.
Democrats – you disgust me.
Supreme Court – you disgust me as well.
California – you should be broken off the West Coast and sunk into the sea to be never be heard from again.
Go USA! Down the drain goes freedom! Rise socialism! Rise slavery!
Perhaps the GOP will finally come to the table and discuss a single payer system that fixes the flaws of ACA.
No, that won’t happen, they will continue to complain, grandstand for repeal, and know that ACA is still much better than what we have had for the last two decades.
The Congressional races are important. It is time to elect Congressmen that put leadership ahead of their pocketbooks.
Trevor, not for nothing but that was a pretty disgusting post as well.
I am not sure how you think President Obama has “forced the market to now treat health as a commodity” when that is precisely the model it was already based on. (He wanted the public option, remember?) Private insurance handling, in some cases even deciding, your medical care and treatment has been the norm for all of my life. I know no other model, except having the wealth to pay everything out of pocket or do without and let the rest of the nation pay and ignore the insurance control.
That he has pushed for us all to be in that same market might be offensive to your sensibilities but it is about damn time from my perspective. I am tired of sacrificing to pay for health insurance and seeing people without it still get good medical care without it because they are willing to risk it.
I am glad the court ruled that the commerce clause cannot be used to compel people to buy insurance (or anything else). It remains to be seen how the law will work in the long run. I fear that the lobbiest in DC will make sure their clients get “taken care of” which will likely result in higher costs for medical care.
Amen, Trevor! Everyone can get ready to get those 666 chips inmplanted into their backsides. All those big servers warming up can now be a hackers dream. How long will it take, before barry wants us to only buy the cars of his “dreams.”
For all those that opposed this, you have a vote in Nov., or pay the tax!
Look to Greece and Spain and behold our future! Bankruptcy and collapse.
This is a dark day for America.
Well! Obama lied! The head of HHS lied! The Dem leadership lied! They all said Obamacare was not a tax and was legal under the commerce clause.
Well! The SCOTUS said Obamacare was indeed a tax and thus legal. The mandate is not legal under the commerce clause but is legal as a tax.
So now Obama and the Dems have levied the largest tax increase in world history and it will be paid by the uninsured and the middle class. No longer can Obama say he will not raise taxes on the middle class.
This takes $500B from medicare and adds trillions to the deficit. And guess who, for the time being anyway, gets this tax money. It’s the insurance companies that gets all this tax money, not the government!
The reason that Obama and the Dems claimed it was not a tax was so it would pass Congress. They all lied. It is a tax.
This ruling takes away a campaign issue from Obama as he was going to campaign against the SCOTUS. It gives Romney a campaign issue in that a majority of the voters do not want Obamacare.
No matter what the SCOTUS rulied, Obamacare is still bad law!
Good God in Heaven! From the rhetoric of the right wing, WWIII has started and our shores have been breached. Conservatives are really pushing the hate, fear and anger cards, even for something as important and needed as health care reform, you cannot work with anyone not drinking your koolaide. It is not a sad day, but you are sad lot indeed.
Not a big deal as it will be repealed anyway.
To those who think this is socialism a question: Is every other developed country in the world socialsit because of their health care plan?
This is great news indeed and I am very proud of the supreme court. They’ve contributed greatly to Obama’s defeat in November!
Guess what?
I just looked outside and saw the sun still shining!
To be candid, I’m neither pleased nor displeased with the court’s ruling today. In my humble opinion, we’ve really done nothing to address health care costs.
The only thing that has been accomplished is to provide insurance that covers the costs levied by hospitals and doctors for services rendered.
I’ve said for years that there needs to be a total analysis of the real costs for medical procedures versus what is billed for them.
As a cancer patient, I fully contend that until such time as the cure for cancer becomes more profitable than the treatment of the disease, we won’t ever have a cure. The treatment revenue is too large to be dismissed on the financial statements of the care providers.
Just my two cents worth.
Good luck to those of you thinking you can get a repeal. It will take 60 Senate votes.
#7 Oh, John R, quit whining. Just because the SC sees it one way doesn’t mean Obama “lied.” We know, of course, that’s the line your overlords have told you to push, but it doesn’t make it true.
Now let’s see, right wingers said the SC would overturn this and that would lead to Obama’s defeat. Now that they haven’t overturned it, right wingers are saying it will lead to Obama ‘s defeat.
Strange.
To our conservative commenters – I mean this sincerely, I’m sorry this ruling stings so much for you.
I have a friend at work who’s more conservative than myself (but who isn’t). We sometimes disagree on things politically and when it’s a big deal like this ruling, it hurts. We’ve both experienced it and it is no fun being on the losing side.
So, I’m sorry it stings so much.
If it makes you feel any better (and I hope it does), I wanted universal health care and all I got what that crappy Obamacare where I’m still paying into private for-profit insurance agencies with 30% overhead.
Anyway, get it out of your system here. It will be better tomorrow.
Obama has set the precedence that an admin. can pick and choose what federal laws to enforce and which to ignore as the Obama admin. ignores parts of the immigration laws and the DOMA.
A Pres. Romney’s DOJ can elect not to enforce Obamacare, not try to collect the “tax/penalty” from those who do not purchase health insurance, and not to go after those people, states, and institutions that do not comply with the law.
The GOP controlled House can choose not to fund implementation of Obamacare.
So if there are not 60 votes in the Senate for repeal, Obamacare can still be blocked!
That is the result of Obama’s expanding the power of the executive branch.
It ain’t over till it’s over! And it ain’t over yet!
#16 – Not stinging at all, Scott. Just sad to see what is happening to our once great country.
Oh well, life will go on…
#3 “I am tired of sacrificing to pay for health insurance and seeing people without it still get good medical care without it because they are willing to risk it.”
Now (until repealed), you will sacrifice more, to pay more. At the same time, the care you receive will decline in quality & accessibility. And, those not paying, will for the most part, still not pay. Buy stock in the IRS. (And the insurance companies).
#14 He was a constitutional lecturer and is supposed to be knowledgable about the COnstitutuion and presumably his own legislation. He either lied about it being a tax, or is so incompetent that he didn’t know. It started as a tax bill in the House (where tax bills must originate) so it seems that they made sure to cover that base implying they intended it to be a tax.
17. John R – As I said yesterday, the lack of enforcement of immigration laws has been going on for decades and exploded under GWB. Please get your precedents correct.
As for the rest, give it your best shot. But the longer citizens see the advantages of ACA, the harder it will be for your House to not fund it. Of course, that is if the GOP can hang on tho the House which considering the sentiments of most citizens about Congress, is certainly doubtful.
If the insurance companies get all those new customers, they should be able to hold steady or even reduce the rates charged and we will certainly need to know why if they don’t. As for less coverage or care, that is a totally empty and meaningless fear mongering tactic that is not going to happen.
The GOP needs to send a clear message to Bob McDonnell and everyone else: If you aid the Obama government, even in the slightest degree, your political career is finished. We won’t support Collaborators.
The real question to be answered now is whether the individual costs for a particular service or procedure performed by a doctor or hospital will change.
In reality, if there is indeed a “cost of goods” model for delivering a service or procedure by a healthcare provider, then one component of that cost has to be a value to cover the cost for providing that service to the uninsured or under insured.
Theoretically, if the service providers are able to be paid for those services that historically they had to write off in the past, then the cost to provide those services should go down.
Will they? That may be a whole new debate that will have to take place. I do find it interesting that the stock prices of three od the largest hospital operators in the country have gone up. By as much as 10% today since the ruling came out.
The Obamacare Tax will cost the taxpayers trillions.
Obama and the Dems insisting that their critics were wrong in calling Obamacare a tax. This was a calculated disception. They knew that if they called it a tax, it would fail to pass Congress.
Obama claimed he would never raise taxes on the middle class. The Joint Comm. on Taxation estimates 75% of the cost of the Obamacare Tax will fall on the middle class.
Obama lied, freedom died!
Hey all you armchair Constitutional scholars, put THAT in your pipe and smoke it! The pundits are already screaming for Robert’s impeachment. Great idea! Then the president can fill the vacancy with someone to the left of Michael Moore. Ah, the Schadenfreude, I bask in it’s warmth!
Seriously, “Collaborators”? I think the TP/GOP is sending a very clear message, UNHINGED, in living color!
#21 “But the longer citizens see the advantages of ACA, the harder it will be for your House to not fund it.”
Richard (I suspect) you know better. ACA is front loaded with all the goodies, the true costs & intrusions come later. That was part of the presentation, get certain goodies in place, and inertia. And now the taxes and Medicaid debacle.
Roberts showed himself to be the genuine conservative. Bending over backwards in judicial restraint. It’s back in the voter’s hands.
@23 Steve, that’s quite a bit over the top. Imagine if our elected representatives had your attitude. We’d never get anything done………
First, we had hospitals that would turn away anybody without insurance, regardless of how life-threatening their condition. Federal law stopped that. Then, the sound bite was about how the uninsured were clogging emergency rooms, because they couldn’t get appointments. These people could not afford to pay anything and couldn’t even be sued. Amn those of us lucky enough to have insurance paid for it with higher premiums. So, why is the idea that everyone has to have insurance such a far stretch? Nobody says we all have to have a $1000 per month gold plated policy. Catastrophic care will suffice, offered locally at less than $100/month. If you can’t afford that, the Fed will step in. The idea that 26000 people died last year in this country, according to the Nat.Inst of Health, because they had no insurance to treat their disease. This selfish, back-stabbing pitiful excuse for citizenship is so devoid of nationalism and the Christian ethic of looking out for one another goes beyond the pale.
We are NOT heavily taxed in this country, we just pay for too many other countries that don’t need or warrant our help. We fight too many worthless wars for no real cause. We have been intionally divided by over-monied political interests by design. Like anybody else up against the wall, our government for decades has made bad decisions regarding expenditures and our financial systems, Wall Street included, have made a mockery of our economy. Time to remember we’re all here together. Americans. And maybe we won’t have to see a mason jar at the store to collect money because little Susie needs cancer treatment.
Will, a part of the pricing system I’ve not seen regarded is that the cash price for hospital care is also a negotiating tool. Like, I think my car is worth $5k and you think $2K. We will haggle just like those insurance companies do with the Hospital corporations. How else could you explain a $4000 MRI bill being satisfied with $800 by an insurance company? It’s the hospital owners/executives that don’t care who gets hurt in the process. Look at all those lawyers…..
A big win for President Obama. Also gas prices are down and I am sure the GOP will want to thank President Obama for this. After all they are so good at praising the president.
#26 Actually Art, I appreciate Roberts’ judicial restraint. I am sure you realize had he not offered the “tax” out, which Obasma & company most patently lied about, the entire act would have been struck.
Instead he acted with restraint, conservatively and put it back into the hands of the electorate. See you in November.
By the way….did you happen to catch the news today from the House?
June 28, 2012 is a day that will live in infamy. It was a day that America officially became a socialist nation. It was a day that marked the end of freedom as we know it.
Ruling 5-4 to uphold ObamaCare, the Supreme Court of the United States gave the Federal Government unlimited power over our individual lives. As a result, the quality of our healthcare and the freedom to choose our doctors and hospitals has been stripped. This decision also sets the dangerous precedent for future government take-overs of our lives.
Thankfully, True Patriots do not believe in giving in or giving up.
28. Jim Lucas, I am very aware of the details of the law. i am also aware that this provision of the law only affects those that do not have insurance. Since my insurance costs have risen to pay for those that do not have insurance I firmly believe it is fair to ask them to pay for their care. Obviously provisions are made for those who cannot. Will this cost some, of course, however, costs have gone out of sight for those paying for those not covered.
I just don’t think so! “Plan B” is doomed.
Repeal Is a Fantasy
Seriously? This system has a long way to go before it is the best.
Emergency Room Waits Now Average Six Hours
“…in 2009, patients admitted to hospitals waited on average six hours in emergency rooms. Nearly 400,000 patients waited 24 hours or more.”
A better system is well worth this effort.
As opposed to all the bashing of the plan, why don’t we all address the real cost of healthcare at the service provider level rather than the insurance level?
To do otherwise is kinda like closing the barn door after the horses have run out.
If you want to get a handle on controlling cost, that’s where you start.
AS AN INDIVIDUAL WHO WORKS IN THE NURSING FIELD, I HAVE ALWAYS FELT THAT HEALTH INSURANCE IS A TWO WAY STREET . THERE ARE AMERICANS WHO HAVE TO MAKE CHOICES ON PAYING FOR THEIR LIFE NECESSITIES ( I.E. RENT, UTILITIES , FOOD, ETC. ) OR FOR PAYING ON MEDICATION. WHILE ON THE OTHER “ROADSIDE”, SOME INSURED MILLI-BILLIES ( I.E. MILLIONAIRES OR BILLIONAIRES ) WONDER ABOUT THEIR NEXT NEWEST YACHT .
I DON’T WANT TO BE THE ONE WHO THINKS THAT THE “ROBIN-HOOD” EFFECT WILL FIT ALL AMERICANS-BECAUSE THERE ARE SOME UNPRODUCTIVE AMERICANS WHO WOULD WANT TO BE “PARASITES”. I GUESS MY APPROACH TO THE ‘PAYING-INTO-THE-HEALTH-INSURANCE’ IS THE ‘BORROW-FROM-PAUL-TO-PAY-TO-PETER-IN-WHICH-PETER-PAYS-BACK’. . . AND THE WAY TO DO THIS IS- IF IT’S LEGAL – TAX THE IMAGE OF HEALTH-SPORT HEROES!
YES, TAX THESE PROFESSIONAL ‘PAID-TO-ENTERTAIN-US-GODS’! FROM GOLFERS TO FOOTBALLERS TO RACERS TO BASKETBALLERS TO HORSE RACERS TO BASEBALLERS, ETC. YES, CHEER THESE UNBELIEVABLE PROFESSIONAL PEOPLE ON. . . FOR “YOUR HEALTH” ! SERIOUSLY, WHY NOT ! WE SUPPORT AND WE DEDICATE OUR TIME TO THEM. SEE HOW THE “PAUL-PETER” THEORY COULD WORK ?
IN CLOSING, I KNOW THIS SOUNDS LIKE BS. . .BIG SMILES. . .BUT I THINK THAT HAVING SOME KIND OF HEALTHCARE IS VERY IMPORTANT !
I think back to the recent column about the nation being “bad followers” or something to that effect…you recall the David Brooks piece. Of course it was a steaming pile of bovine excrement and yesterday’s SC decision only highlights why.
The head of our nation’s Executive Branch said healthcare reform was NOT a tax and should go forward. The head of the nation’s Judicial Branch said it was a tax and could go forward. So this is the leadership befitting the greatest nation on earth. Don’t question it…acceptance is easier..just behave sheeple…baaaaaah!
Actually Sandi, Jonathan Turley in the article you site is being misleading or has been misled. The total door to treatment times for ERs is between 4 and 4.5 hours. Of course these extended periods couldn’t be due to walk-in traffic which couldn’t be bothered to set up appointments with local clinics or utilize urgent care centers….or the fact that under law ERs can’t deny treatment regardless of the patient’s ability to pay.
Press Ganey is a consultant group that Turley refers to which works with ERs around the nation. They have articles stating that time spent in the ER average less than 5 hours and that is NOT the time waiting to be seen.
Ok…all you folks that are so riled up about the ruling, you claim you wast the ACA repealed.
Tell me what you’re going to do in it’s place. Or, perhaps are you going to follow the same path as those from the previous forty years and stick your collective heads in the sand and pretend there is no problem?
It’s strange that I’ve heard no viable alternatives to what’s on the table and it’s even more strange that the plan that’s in place was fashioned based on the strong recommendations of republicans when a healthcare overhaul was proposed back in the 1990′s. It strikes me as even more bizarre that the plan currently in place is modeled most closely to that which Willard put in place in Mass.
Was he for that kind of plan before he was against that kind of plan or is it political expediency to play to the base regardless of right or wrong?
In my mind, you better have a viable alternative formulated befor you start kicking out what’s in place. Otherwise, all the griping and complaining is shallow and meaningless at best.
As I’ve said in earlier posts…get to the root of the problem with regard to actual costs versus the cost of an insurance policy.
Remember, it was Obamacare that inspired the tea party and it led the GOP to a landslide victory in Nov. ’10.
This Obamacare Tax will rejuvenate the tea party and conservatives and will lead the GOP to a similar victory this Nov.!
BUD, even if it is considered a tax (and parsing is all the rage), it is still a voluntary tax that the 100+million who have insurance will not pay, the millions more who can not get it will not have to pay and the millions who cannot afford it will not have to pay so that leaves only the people who can afford insurance but have refused to carry it who will pay the penalty/”tax”. I can live with that.
Jesus called us sheep too!
Why yes BUD, you nailed it. Indeed, extended periods could be due to walk-in traffic that didn’t have any health insurance or cash money, so no local doctor would accept an appointment. So yes, “the fact that under law ERs can’t deny treatment regardless of the patient’s ability to pay” has a prominent role in every ER wait time. THAT, is yet another problem with so many people uninsured and uncovered by any other plan.
I agree with your sentiments Will..if we’re gonna b-tch an alternative needs to be put up.
#43 There’s John R!!! Come on, John R, aren’t you happy about the +177 opening of the Dow Jones? How come you haven’t announced it to the blog?
What kind of tax is the Obamacare Tax?
It does not fall into any of the tax classifications that the Constitution allows the fed. government to impose. It is not a tax on income, nor an excise tax, nor a direct (capitated) tax.
Now not only can Washington tax your income, it can determine how you spend what is left over. This extends the power of the fed. government beyond what the Constitution intended. There is nothing now that Washington can’t tax.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/rtd-opinion/2012/jun/29/tdopin01-command-and-control-ar-2021207/
Sandi, What is voluntary about the Obamacare Tax?
If you don’t have insurance and don’t purchase it, you are in trouble with the IRS. As is a business that doesn’t provide health insurance.
Studies show that as many as 70% of small businesses may drop health insurance and pay the tax to save money, leaving employees to fend for themselves. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the Obamacare Tax only applies to businesses with 50 or more employees.
@6 Steve, says, “Look to Greece and Spain and behold our future! Bankruptcy and collapse.”
Steve, check out this link:
http://anticap.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/chart-of-the-day-96/
Do you see a pattern between countries’ social spending and their current borrowing costs?
I don’t…..
The point is, the countries you cite aren’t there because they’ve spent too much on health care. We could end up there but won’t necessarily because of this ruling.