The Affordable Care Act is upheld, but on grounds not contained in the legislation. The individual mandate is now a tax, which Congress has the authority to levy. It is not permissible under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. It seems like a very, very, strange decision.
Yeah, I agree. Not real happy about it, but I guess we just need to be smarter at the ballot box.
While on the surface it’s a victory for the President and Democrats, it gives the Republicans a huge issue going into the fall. If they are smart to exploit. Remember that the Democrats lost the House in 2010 because of this law. Now, those arguments are reborn. This could work for the Republicans in the long run. Rather, I should say this could work for the foundations this nation was built on in the long run. Of course others can disagree.
It gives Republicans nothing. If it’s a tax, than it’s a tax that Romney already imposed on Massachusetts when he was Governor- why wouldn’t he support this tax? And so on.
I disagree. What Chief Justice Robers did, in part, was throw this right back into the political arena. While upholding the individual mandate as a tax, he gave Republicans in general, not just Romney, a campaign issue. Now that the voters are finding out what is in the law, they really don’t like it. They aren’t going to like the 3.8% tax when they sell their houses, they aren’t going to like the tax on medical devices, and they really aren’t going to like the shift of funds from Medicare to Medicaid which will reduce care for the elderly and put the “savings” into health care for those who don’t produce anything.
In MA, Romney had a Democrat controlled legislature, in Washington, he won’t. He might let the House and the Senate do the heavy lifting, but he’ll sign a repeal or legislation limiting the law. Not also that Obama so far has got zero bump from “winning” on this one. That should tell us something.
Yeah, I’d have preferred Medicare for All but the ACA is a far cry from the republiCons Repeal-and-Do-Nothing plan.
Irrespective of the idea of whether such healthcare mandates are good or bad ideas, it’s IMHO a piss-poor decision. The SCOTUS is supposed to review laws and rule on whether they’re constitutional; NOT edit them until they’re acceptable.
Health care is broken; but I’m not convinced that Obamacare (aka Romneycare) is any better.