Supremes uphold Romneycare, including mandate

David G. Savage writes: "The Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. upheld the heart of President Obama's healthcare law Thursday, ruling that the government may impose tax penalties on those who do not have health insurance." The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice Roberts (not Kennedy) swinging it. [LA Times]

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strangefriend

I for one am happy because this means I still have health insurance (thank you PCIP!)
http://www.pciplan.com/index.html
Mitchell Glaser

Gotta love that Diana Ross, she’s doing a great job.
FrakSnark

Just wow. Double wow that Roberts was the swing. Perhaps all is not lost in the coming years, after all.
- jerwin
  
  Tom Scocca suggests that it’s all part of Robert’s campaign to gut the commerce clause. The court’s opinion suggests that the mandate lies outside Congress’s authority to regulate commerce, overturning decades of “settled” law, but within Congress’s authority to tax.
  - Thad Boyd
    
    George Will made the same argument in a WSJ op/ed. (He, of course, sees it as a good thing.)
    - jerwin
      
      Thanks. Here’s a link to his column
  - FrakSnark
    
    I’m not buying all the talk of Roberts trying to diminish the commerce clause. That claim sounds tenuous at best. Most scholars agreed that trying to regulate inaction under the CC was a reach. Wickard (if you grow your own wheat and don’t buy wheat from the market, that can affect the market in wheat, therefore the government can tell you not to grow your own wheat) and its progeny are still “settled” law.
    
    IMHO, it’s more likely that Roberts is worried that the Court, especially since Bush v. Gore, has become increasingly politicized, with justices voting along ideological lines. Thursday’s decision is more likely an effort to push back against that trend and to protect the legitimacy of the Court.
asterios9

Do we really have to call it “Obamacare,” even here? Sigh. BoingBoing is normally pretty sensitive to the partisan implications of terminology.

I’m pleased that the law survived and got this much-needed boost, but still pessimistic going ahead. The fact that a majority of the country (like 60% in polls I’ve seen) thinks an effort to make sure everyone has coverage is a bad thing is hugely depressing.
- ganatronic
  
  Now it says Romneycare.
  
  If it’s any consolation, Republicans basically devised this health care plan and supported it for two decades. And I’m sure that a lot more people in the country supported it before Obama re-pitched it.
- OoerictoO
  
  calling it obamacare isn’t the problem. any word can be divisive. but now that word has been reclaimed and isn’t really used as a negative any longer
  - Thad Boyd
    
    Yeah, I don’t like the term either but given that Obama has started using it himself I think it’s fair game.
    - franko
      
      i have never heard him refer to it as anything but the ACA.
      - Thad Boyd
        
        He made a joke about it a few months back. “I don’t mind if people call it Obamacare. I don’t mind if people say ‘Obama Cares’.”
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1040387534 Martha Clayton
  
  Polls=manipulated nonsense.
- StreetEight
  
  “Obamacare” is slang for “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” just as “Bush tax cuts” are slang for “Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003″
  
  If one is acceptable so is the other.
  - Thad Boyd
    
    Well, not really.
    
    “Bush tax cuts” is used as much by supporters as detractors.
    
    And realistically, Bush had a lot more to do with the tax cuts than Obama did with the healthcare bill. Though neither side really wants to admit that.
Gimlet_eye

So the Supreme Court has ruled that Obama was lying when he insisted that this was not a tax….
- http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair
  
  How does a ruling retroactively turn a statement into a lie? Please enlighten us
  - Gimlet_eye
    
    Well, when a statement is ruled to have been a lie. Obama pledged he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and that the health care “penalty” on anyone not buying qualified insurance was not a tax. The Supreme Court just ruled that it was a tax. Ergo, Obama lied when he said it wasn’t a tax and that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.
    - OoerictoO
      
      you have to be kidding. that’s a stretch at best. potato potahto.
      nevermind… see what @PhosPhorious said below…
    - http://twitter.com/Epers Eddie Perkins
      
      You guys will try anything, won’t you?
    - wysinwyg
      
      Gimlet — you realize “lying” involves knowing that the statement is not true before you say it, right?
      
      Like, if I check a thermometer and say “it’s 90 degrees” and then find out later that it’s 70 degrees and the thermometer is broken, I wouldn’t actually have been lying. Clear enough?
      
      Bear in mind I’m no fan of Obama and wouldn’t bother “defending” him if I thought you actually had a point. There’s plenty of substantial criticisms you could make of Obama. This is not one of them.
      - Gimlet_eye
        
        Yes, I do. It was well known that they’d have to raise taxes to pay for this, but that wouldn’t work politically, so they called it a “shared responsibility payment” in the bill itself. Then, in court, they argued (part of the time) that it was a tax. Don’t let the obfuscations fool you.
  - Thad Boyd
    
    Weeeell it IS entirely possible that Obama described it as “not a tax” while simultaneously preparing to defend it in the Supreme Court by saying it WAS a tax.
    
    Kinda like how he went on TV and swore he was trying to keep the public option while he had Rahm Emmanuel going around assuring Big Pharma that it wouldn’t be in the final bill.
- PhosPhorious
  
  No. Roberts’ reasoning wad that it could be interpreted either as a tax or not, and so can’t be ruled unconstitutional. The point being that there is no objective fact that makes it a tax or not. It’s a matter of legal judgement.
  - eFarther
    
    Every dollar the government forcibly takes from you is a tax no matter what it is called (driver’s license fee, vehicle registration fees, 911 surcharge, income tax, property tax, excise tax, toll road fees, etc., etc., etc.). It’s use does not determine the definition.
    - PhosPhorious
      
      But if it’s a tax, then why was there a question about its Constitutionality? Congress has the right to tax, period. It’s in the Constitution.
      - eFarther
        
        Because defering things like this to the “Supreme” Court is a political move, not a logical one. And it gives it some sort of credibility when the justices say it’s ok, even if it’s not what the people want. Yeah, so much for democracy.
        
        Also, if Obama would’ve called it like it is then the uproar would’ve been much louder. Everyone hates taxes, right. Like that would’ve gotten this thing passed…nope.
        
        Instead, in true political fashion, the words were changed to protect the beauracracy in an attempt to slide one by the American people. They all do it, Democrats, Republicans, Others. Confusion is a form of control. I would say that the US Government is the leader in playing this con game. Cell phone companies would come in a close second.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Because defering things like this to the “Supreme” Court is a political move, not a logical one.
        
        You have no idea how government works, do you? The President doesn’t ring the Court and say, “Hey, I wrote up this bill and now I’m deferring this to you for your rubber stamp.”
        
        It was passed by Congress. People who didn’t like it sued to have it overturned.
      - OoerictoO
        
        @eFarther:disqus “so much for democracy”? the US isn’t a democracy.
    - llamaspit
      
      Actually, because you declare a fee to be a tax does not make it a tax. Fees are costs levied to cover a specific use. Taxes are applied to general revenue for whatever purpose they are deemed to be needed.
      We contribute to the general welfare through taxation, whether you like it or not. It is not money that is extorted from you. We can disagree about what the government (your representatives) chooses to do with the money, and we can disagree whether the tax or fee is fair, but the point is to contribute to the costs, and improvements, which we all share.
  - Ito Kagehisa
    
    Roberts’ reasoning wad that it could be interpreted either as a tax or not, and so can’t be ruled unconstitutional.
    
    I thought I was the only one who had noticed that Roberts’ reasoning is presented in wads.
  - PaulDavisTheFirst
    
    his explanation has more to do with court precedent than that. current court precedent has that, if a law may be interpreted in more than one way, and one of them is constitutional, then the other interpretations, even if they are not constitutional, should be ignored. there are several precedents for this in the history of the court.
- millie fink
  
  Do you always get your news from Sarah Palin tweets?
  
  https://twitter.com/sarahpalinusa/status/218353507491786752
- StreetEight
  
  That’s not the lie I’m bothered about.
  
  What I am wondering is, does this mean I’ll be able to keep my current insurance plan (which I like) and my doctor (which I like)??? That is what the President explicitly promised after all.
  - mccrum
    
    That is a discussion you need to have with your insurance provider, not the President of the United States.
  - http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius
    
    *scratches head*
    
    You do realize that the whole point of this healthcare law was to get people to join privately-run insurance plans right?
    
    The only things that have changed for private insurance companies are that the law caps how much profit an insurance company can make and mandates a few new provisions to make their business cheaper in the long run (electronic records, free preventative care, etc.).
  - Navin_Johnson
    
    Yes it does, that’s been known for ages now…
- Manny
  
  I shouldn’t be surprised that people don’t consider the option “was mistaken”. It’s not nearly as satisfying as accusing someone of something.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

Has anyone described Chief Justice Roberts as an “activist judge” yet?
- howaboutthisdangit
  
  Clearly he’s been drinking that liberal Kool-Aid.
- rattypilgrim
  
  Michele Bachman has.
- Shane Simmons
  
  Well, Bachmann called the COURT activist–and schizophrenic– and expressed disappointment in Justice Roberts. Presumably they wouldn’t be an activist court if they had struck the law down.
  
  http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S2672171.shtml?cat=10217
  - abstract_reg
    
    This law is the will of the legislature, upholding is isn’t activist, it’s just doing his job.
    - Thad Boyd
      
      And since when has that ever stopped anybody from calling a judge an activist?
    - wysinwyg
      
      ”Activist judge” means “judge whose rulings are not consistent with my biases.” Every judge is activist from the perspective of some reactionary loony somewhere.
- Navin_Johnson
  
  Romney probably should be careful not to:
  
  As president, Mitt will nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts
  
  http://www.mittromney.com/issues/courts-constitution
  - Thad Boyd
    
    Yeah, we wouldn’t want people thinking that Romney supported a health insurance mandate.
PathogenAntifreeze

The history of the Amish fight against Social Security can shed a lot of light on the precedents involved here: http://www.amishnews.com/amisharticles/amishss.htm
TheKaz1969

so combine this with their ruling that corporations are people and.. now corporations will be taxed if they don’t carry their own health insurance?
- OoerictoO
  
  nice try. their ruling was that corporations can expect SOME of the same rights as people, including free speech which can be extended to their expenditures.
  However, in most states, they DO have to buy (or aid in pooling) insurance for their employees.
CSBD

I especially liked how MSNBC and CNN originally posted that the mandate portions were struck down… then they changed their articles.
- DrunkenOrangetree
  
  I’m not aware that MSNBC posted a mistaken report. FOX news did.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    You’re correct. MSNBC managed to restrain themselves until they actually read the ruling.
psychedelicdonut

My brother was diagnosed with Cancer when he was 17. The medication alone costs $100,000 per year, plus the cost of doctors, specialists and hospital stays. Luckily we live in Canada, where the majority of population don’t mind paying extra taxes if it means we save the lives of those unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with a debilitating disease. It is actually rather interesting to know that $150 million Americans would rather save a buck than a life.
- HahTse
  
  Same for Germany. Really happy to live in a country where I know that if I need medical help, I WILL get it.
- Thad Boyd
  
  150 million Dollar-Americans?
  
  Okay, now this political correctness stuff really HAS gone too far.
  - psychedelicdonut
    
    I used the dollar sign to reiterate that a vast number of Americans see potential dollars saved before potential lives saved.
- Mitchell Glaser
  
  How come nobody ever points out that the admittedly huge sums of money spent on health care pay a lot of employee’s salaries and fund a ton of businesses? Of course I support universal healthcare as a basic right, but I am also happy to see people working useful jobs that help society. It demands regulation, but it is basically a win/win in my book: take the gambling money away from the criminal bankers and invest it in reviving America’s crumbling healthcare infrastructure.
  - OoerictoO
    
    people often point that out. just because there is an industry that supports jobs doesn’t mean we need to support it. the coal industry supports jobs. the child-smuggling industry supports jobs.
    and you contradict yourself. universal healthcare, in its most sustainable forms will not include private, for-profit health insurance companies. i’ve worked in that industry. so have many in my family. good riddance. i’m tired of over-subsidizing their profits at the expense of this country’s health and productivity
    - Mitchell Glaser
      
      My point is that it creates jobs in an industry that helps people as opposed to, say, hedge-fund banking. And certainly as opposed to child smuggling, that’s just obvious bullshit you can keep to yourself. On the other hand, if the sloppy healthcare industry ends up actually providing healthcare to a significantly larger slice of the public, I think we accomplish something. And lots of people are desperate for jobs.
      - OoerictoO
        
        sorry, the child-smuggling part was a bit Godwin. a BS response to a BS statement summed up as “but it supports jobs!”
        At what point do we say it’s not worth it? every other developed nation in the world has universal and single payer healthcare; read: no health insurance jobs. most of them are far healthier and more productive than the US, and with more vacation! but i digress.
        i understood your point. my point is opposing. just because an industry supports good jobs doesn’t mean we should support it. in this case it’s at the cost of hundreds of thousands of peoples’ poor health and productivity. that affects all of us, just like the coal industry does.
Cowicide

I hate to say it, but is this maybe a strategy to keep a single payer system for health care at bay? There was a lot of talk that if this got struck down that it could in various ways allow the single payer system to step up in its place.

I just hope Americans aren’t going to be pacified by this and keep pressure on a real single payer system instead of this private insurance hybrid garbage.

More info: http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-faq
dioptase

Let say this upfront: I think universal healthcare is a good idea.

But I think this version of healthcare is a disaster. It fixes very little and makes it harder to get a proper system. The ruling was bad news in that now we are stuck with it for the foreseeable future. I would have preferred this plan be shot and buried so we can create a proper system.

I’m also rather disturbed by the new ability of government to require us to buy something. Enforced by threat of a tax. It may be for a good cause, but it’s a bad precedent. I don’t expect it to cause a problem any time soon. Maybe not for decades. But some day some bunch of politicians will decide to do something stupid and use this as a precedent to make it happen.

You may now burn the heretic…
- Jerril
  
  I agree that in civilized countries, the government buys it FOR you instead of telling you to buy it. But either way, it’s bought with your money, and it’s not new at all.
  - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
    
    The underlying claim, though, is that the government-as-single-payer has vastly more buying power than a collection of private individuals, care providers and insurers (especially when it is itself the provider). So it gets it cheaper, especially commodity items like drugs and care supplies.
    - OoerictoO
      
      interesting, Rob. i read @boingboing-e846fb8a4f365ca8e84393d4f34e1b07:disqus ‘s comment as very pro-single-payer. but i tend to be biased and optimistic.
      - wysinwyg
        
        Getting meta, but I didn’t read Rob’s comment as “anti-anti-single-payer” — I saw it as clarifying how Romneycare is different from single payer and why it’s worth making the distinction.
- Thad Boyd
  
  I’ve always been a bit uneasy about the mandate, but on the other hand, the government requires me to contrbute money to shady private industries all the damn time as it is.
  
  I’m not thrilled about this version of healthcare (why would I be? It’s the Heritage Foundation version, or it was before the Democrats decided they liked it and suddenly it became socialism), but it’s better than nothing. A step in the right direction, particularly in forcing coverage for people with preexisting conditions.
  - Cowicide
    
    My sentiments exactly.
- P1rat3
  
  Think of it like car insurance. If you own a car and drive it on public roads, it must be insured. If you drive your car without insurance, you get fined and or arrested. Everyone doesn’t buy car insurance because everyone doesn’t own a car.
  
  With Healthcare, Since everyone does have a body, every has to buy body health insurance. Why is this such a difficult concept?
  - neurogami
    
    Why are people forced to get car insurance? Because of possible harm to themselves, or because they may harm others?
    - millie fink
      
      Because they may harm others, and/or others’ cars, and not be able to pay for it.
      - OoerictoO
        
        are you under the impression that sick people don’t hurt others?
      - millie fink
        
        No.
  - http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin
    
    Because using a car is a privilege, although the infrastructure makes it hard on those of us who don’t; using a body is a necessity. Why is this such a difficult concept?
    - OoerictoO
      
      the analogy isn’t perfect. but the sentiment is. everyone has to buy insurance to protect the rest of us from paying for high insurance prices and from paying for the healthcare and loss of productivity of those who can’t afford it at extremely high prices (emergency room). this will save the entire country hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 10 years, according to the GAO
      - http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin
        
        And how does this help anyone except the insurance companies again? Insurance companies take money in, but they hardly ever pay money out. And when someone has catastrophic health-care costs, insurance companies dump them on everyone else, so someone else has to pay for them anyway. If everyone has to pay in, then the insurance companies can jack up their premia, and I’m sure they can find ways to hide their profits, and I’m sure they’ll still find excuses to refuse coverage.
        
        I have a birth condition which every insurance company demands an exclusion for. So if I’m forced to buy insurance, they won’t cover that, and they won’t cover anything they can blame on that, which is everything.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        I have a birth condition which every insurance company demands an exclusion for. So if I’m forced to buy insurance, they won’t cover that, and they won’t cover anything they can blame on that, which is everything.
        
        Can they still do exclusions?
      - http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin
        
        And what is the sentiment here?
      - OoerictoO
        
        @openid-101691:disqus the contents of my statement helps only in peoples’ understanding. but the contents of the ACA help millions of people, and you are right, also the insurance companies. people with existing conditions, women with higher rates than men, people under 26 who could not get coverage, can be on their parents policies. All children now have coverage. because more people will buy insurance ALL of our rates should go down, or so the free-market apologists say.
        i would much rather eliminate the insurance industry altogether and have a single payer system, like every other developed nation in the world. In the meantime we’re helping millions and keeping a dead industry alive just like the republicans wanted by design (obamacare is based on republican initiatives from years prior)
    - Cowicide
      
      I have a birth condition which every insurance company demands an exclusion for. So if I’m forced to buy insurance, they won’t cover that, and they won’t cover anything they can blame on that, which is everything.
      
      That’s a pre-existing condition and will now be covered, won’t it?
      
      http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/07/29/insurance-americans-with-pre-existing-conditions
      
      Please correct me if I’m wrong.
- atimoshenko
  
  I’m also rather disturbed by the new ability of government to require us to buy something.
  
  This is not an ability that the government has (nor one it was trying to have). The mandate prevents free riders – people who would not buy insurance but still be in a position to receive some level of treatment (e.g. access to the emergency room). As @boingboing-94d6187a6afe50b1bd725c7f5e01fa55:disqus rightly pointed out about car insurance – if you are in a position to, at some point, to be responsible for the using up of some resources that are not your own (whether through consumption or destruction, or whatever else), you must make the contributions necessary for the existence of those resources. Insurance is not a good to buy – it is a mechanism of risk pooling.
  - morcheeba
    
    Exactly. I’m surprised that republicans haven’t been spouting off about the “unfunded mandate” that hospitals treat people who show up in emergency rooms without healthcare.
- Cowicide
  
  I’m also rather disturbed by the new ability of government to require us to buy something.
  
  Then you must really hate roads.
bklynchris

Your title almost killed me….literally. I laughed so hard I started to choke on my lunch. I think this would make for great liberal presented attack ads.
tacochuck

I just want to point out, calling it health care reform is a non productive description. It is in fact, health insurance reform.
senorglory

i wonder about the implications of 86ing part of the medicaid expansion.
RayCornwall

Since individual mandate is an idea going back to the mid-90s, why not call it BobDoleCare?
DrunkenOrangetree

I wonder if anhedonia is covered?
hungryjoe

So now we will all entrust our healthcare to entities that have a financial incentive not to provide said healthcare.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
- Cowicide
  
  I have to admit that there’s a tinfoil hat part of me that wonders if this is just a corporatist plot where they’ll make sure this purposefully fails just so these fuckers can point to it and say that a “single payer system” failed. Nevermind that this is nowhere near an actual single payer system for health care.
  
  I just hope the American public isn’t that stupid to fall for such tricke… oh shit, we’re fucked.
timquinn

Yes, we can force you to do the right thing even if you are too damn stupid to see it for yourself.
pjcamp

I . . . I . . . I feel like I live in a real country!