Scalia Nails It
- Thread starter dandh
- Start date
So to clear up your argument. You think that health insurance is no different than using the ER. Well why have insurance at all then? Why not just have everyone use the ER? If the ER is just as good as the rest of healthcare in keeping people healthy, why do we bother doing anything but ER visits?
You do realize thousands of people no probably closer to millions who signed up for health insurance made the first months premium payment then stopped paying and returned to going to the E.R., Christ where do you think all the illegals go for medical care?
SHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not so loud, Huey.
I worked in a place for 33 years where I could have sworn the clientele believed this was common knowledge!
Sour grapes??? Very weak attempt at a response. BTW, when more than 7 million people were kicked off their individual policies earlier as a result of ACA, libs here applauded. So that's a very weak line also.
The SCOTUS doesn't "update laws". It's all in Separation of Powers.
However, it would appear that they did today.
Probably because we knew that far more would get coverage as a result. But that clearly isn't the case with King. GOP had no response, nor no plan for these people. The Republicans would have simply watched millions lose their coverage and done nothing about it.
The Court updates laws all the time. That's kind of its purpose. To weigh the legality of a variety of issues up against the Constitution.
I thought I did with the second half of my post. Judge the legality of a law in a Constitutional light.
I thought you meant update as in add/change. They can't do that.
They interpret the wording and decide upon constitutionality.
In this case they imagined something that isn't there.
They already did, millions lost their health insurance because of it becoming law.
True. But since then even more have gained it. Uninsured rates have plummeted since the law took effect.
Well even in the add/change case, it appears that the Court can do just that. They just did.
In situations like this, the courts are not supposed to update, they are supposed to determine if laws are constitutional or not based on what is actually written. Not "they wrote this, and intended it that way...but if they had a do-over, they probably would have done that, so lets just go with that and deem it passed". For something like this, you really have to imagine a situation that you do not support, and whether or not a similar decision would have made sense, or been acceptable.
Those that lost their insurance had insurance policies that just didn't cover what they legally were required to cover. Anytime you "switch" over to something new, there will be folks who have to make adjustments they don't think they should have to make. That is the fact.
Anyone who had worked through an ownership change in a business knows this first hand. It is just how the pickle squirts.
You are correct, but the question is where does the court take this newly anointed power to rule something legal or illegal based on not what is written in a law but what they believe the intent of the law is. In this case you agree with what they did but the odds are that will not always be the case.
That's cutting very close to the line of incomprehensibility, but I'll take a stab at it. If Scalia thought that Congress didn't intend for the subsidies to operate in all states...why did he say,
“...the words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme”
and
“Without the federal subsidies … the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended and may not operate at all”?
Seems Scalia doesn't know what he believes.
Because he realizes, as anyone who is being honest with themselves, that the law was specifically written the way that it was for the purposes of strong-arming States to go along with it. Just like any number of other laws that tie funding and subsidies to requirements for States to do certain things. The crafters of the law just severely underestimated the push-back they would get from States. They thought States would just roll over like they do on all sorts of other things (infrastructure, education, etc) and set up the exchanges rather than risk not getting federal funding and explaining that to their citizens. They didn't seriously consider what would happen if a large number of States called their bluff and didn't play ball. Today, the SC bailed them out from this huge miscalculation, and Scalia is simply saying that that is not within the SC's job scope, prerogative, or constitutionally mandated power to do.
You idiot about 2% of the American public subscribe to Obamacare, so you are ok with bankrupting the nation to benefit 2% of the population, don't the other 98% matter?
So when - exactly - did this blackmail take place? Is there a shred of evidence that any state was EVER told, "If you don't set up your own exchange, you won't get subsidies"? Is there any evidence - a sliver - of any state authority going public with this scheme? See...here's your problem - you make this claim for what you say the govt intended but there's not a single scrap of evidence that this path was ever pursued. Not one memo to indicate that even one state was told, "Play ball or no subsidies for you". Not a single incensed state official complaining about the fed's bullying threats. How could that be? When the feds threaten to withhold funding for infrastructure...well...they kinda make sure everybody knows about it. That's the only way that kind of threat works, you know. Yet...not a peep from ANYONE about this strong-arm tactic. And you don't find that at all odd?
You're left with a law that - according to idiots - contained a double secret probation that was never enforced or even threatened. Kinda puts the lie to that whole mythology you just created. Don't be an idiot.
He hit it right on the head, and you call him an idiot, but then I forget you are on Huey's side that the Supreme Court is there to update laws.
The Feds do it all the time with road funds and education how do you think the 55 mph speed limit came about. Go watch the Gruber video on the stupidity of America.
The states have never bitched about except maybe Montana who wanted to keep the limits at 70.
The government said if you don't have something set up, your state doesn't get money for subsidies, that is what this case was all about. So then, follow the law and don't pay subsidies to the states. The Feds decided to do it federally which isn't in the law, but the Supreme Court just wrote it into the law. Pretty damn simple really.
This Supreme Court is now MAKING it's own laws from the bench. Wrong thing to do. Very sad. This whole thing is NOT affordable. People that can only afford the high deductible Policy's can't even use them. What a disaster the Libs and Obama have made. In so many ways.
So now if you write a contract and you sign it, and you didn't understand it or thought the wording was different, does the court then decide it is ok.
Can of worms in my opinion.
Boy, that's an ignorant statement, even for you, Huey.
The ironic thing about what Scalia said is that Roberts agrees with him. Read his majority opinion. In a nutshell, he says: "The law says one thing, but that would destroy the ACA, so the court has to find a way to justify rescuing it again."
JFC, Huey, do you not realize this isn't the court's freaking job? The court isn't supposed to jiggle things around to get the best result in the minds of the justices. It's supposed to enforce the freaking law. Again, JFC.
I'm interesting in hearing the rights response to this. For a blackmail to work, the somebody has to know you are blackmailing them. It isn't like it was common knowledge the states weren't going to get subsidies and then a big announcement was made that the feds flipped and would now provide subsidies to states using the federal exchange.
The states (including Iowa) that chose NOT to subsidy were acting in a political manner. Most of these states that didn't go subsidy are run by Republican governors who for obvious political reasons, opposed ACA for every imaginable reason. Branstad made Iowa's decision NOT to participate. Not the legislature.....Just as Teflon made the decision to move Iowa's MedicAid program to a managed care system(and remove 15-20% of its funding from the clients)....These are just two of many piss-poor decisions and political decisions Teflon has made as Governator of Iowa.........and the people of Iowa just love letting him screw over.
Here's a test from one of Justice Scalia's book - try to answer it without resorting to Google:
What should a Court do when it is presented with this language:
All laws and parts of laws, and particularly Act 311 of the Acts of 1941 are hereby repealed.
A. Party A argues the plain language says that all laws in the state have been repealed - so all laws in the state have been repealed.
B. Party B argues that's not what the Legislature could have meant. If you look at the rest of the challenged law and its legislative history, the Legislature was trying to make sure Act 311 trumped all other laws in the state, so the Court should decide that "and particularly" was incorrect, and rewrite the act as follows:
All laws and parts of law in conflict with Act 311 of the Acts of 1941 are hereby repealed.
What should a Court do when it is presented with this language:
All laws and parts of laws, and particularly Act 311 of the Acts of 1941 are hereby repealed.
A. Party A argues the plain language says that all laws in the state have been repealed - so all laws in the state have been repealed.
B. Party B argues that's not what the Legislature could have meant. If you look at the rest of the challenged law and its legislative history, the Legislature was trying to make sure Act 311 trumped all other laws in the state, so the Court should decide that "and particularly" was incorrect, and rewrite the act as follows:
All laws and parts of law in conflict with Act 311 of the Acts of 1941 are hereby repealed.
Seems pretty clear to me that all Acts of 1941 are repealed. Don't know what the authors of the law meant to do, but that's what they did.
If not, they can pretty easily fix it.
Oh, I'm not debating that. It's very possible that the Court may issue a ruling based on these grounds that I don't like.
Um, no. The Court's job isn't to enforce the law. That particular job goes to people called, "Law Enforcement." The Court's job is to interpret what the law means and they did exactly that in this case.
Again, no. That wasn't the justification for the ruling. The argument was that Obamacare was intended to get insurance in the hands of more people, but that this single part of the law was in opposition of that overall goal. So they decided that this very small part was in error instead of the entire law.
So they updated like you said LOL
You are just burying yourself man. They interpret the federal constitutional law. That is what they are supposed to do anyway. They don't interpret what the law means.
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