Judge rules Obamacare unconstitutional
This was the basis for the ruling:
Reed O’Connor, a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas, just killed Obamacare…
With the removal of the mandate penalty, the mandate no longer was a function of Congress’ taxing power, which was the basis upon which John Roberts and the liberal Justices on the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the mandate in 2012…
The district court ruled that the mandate was an essential and inseverable part of Obamacare. Because the mandate was held to be unconstitutional and inseverable, the judge held the remainder of Obamacare to be unconstitutional.
Before you get too excited about this, let me add that the judge didn’t issue an injunction, so the ruling has no practical effect at the moment.
It also seems to me that, because Obamacare effectively destroyed the old individual insurance market, including its high-risk pools for pre-existing conditions (a phenomenon the existence of which keeps being ignored in discussions of the pre-Obamacare health insurance picture), to stop Obamacare in its tracks doesn’t make sense without an alternative system ready to be put in its place. That’s what “repeal and replace” meant. The old system—which was nowhere near as bad as its critics have made it out to be—no longer exists, so it can’t be relied on as fallback.
What’s more, this ruling may be reversed on appeal. But still, it’s interesting news.
Oh…it’ll make its way to the Supremes…but maybe RBG will have shuffled off this mortal coil and The President will have another appointment sitting on the bench by then.
My state had a high-risk pool partially subsidized by the state before Obamacare passed. It worked. Now, my self-employed friend makes too much to get an Obamacare subsidy, can’t afford to buy it without, and is in a Christian self-insurance pool, hoping to hang on until he turns 65.
I now think Justice Roberts was correct: Obamacare is a tax. It is a tax on the younger and healthier to pay for the older and sicker. Of course, if the Dems had announced that fact, it never would have been passed.
Kill it.
I don’t give a f88k if there is a replacement. I want my freedom back, and to hell with those who would make me a thrall to, and enabler of, their – that is THEIR – autogenic disorders and behavioral conditions. They are enemies of the existential sort … though it be a slo-mo, kind of almost under the radar, type of exploitation.
No such polity, no such social arrangement, no relationship with such a person is worth preserving.
@DNW – and there you have it: the pure sociopathy that is at the root of Trumpism (and libertarianism.) The absolute refusal to recognize that human beings are social animals, that we thrive in cooperation and mutual aid, and that we have non-discretionary obligations to each other. I pity you personally, but I fear what this attitude has done to our society.
Jesse Larner on June 3, 2019 at 9:32 am said:
Well Jesse, there is so much wrong with your comment that, as they say, one hardly knows where to begin. And since there is at this juncture nothing to be gained by trying to engage you on your inflation of otherwise unremarkable anthropological/philosophical assumptions, nor on the distributive logical fallacy common to those holding your stance, I’ll just begin at the beginning and limit myself to that for now.
The general issue is, or was, the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, and its pretexts; and the specific issue is, or was, the individual shared responsibility mandate. Prior to that, independent persons in this country had more choices and cheaper choices for actuarial based medical insurance than they had subsequent to the near midnight passage and enactment of the infamous law that one had to first pass in order to read.
The American people had been solemnly informed by Obama and others that in exchange for giving up the legal and moral right of non-participation, their costs would do down categorically, and that individual choices would remain the same or improve. That’s the notion of “positive liberty” for all you collectivists out there. Freedom is only “freedom” when you have a delectable smorgasbord of choices provided by others who are legally compelled to do so.
So anyway, and no surprise since those promoting the scheme admitted they were deceiving the public, the upshot was that traditional freedoms went away both in law and in practice for independent persons, and the costs went up in an extreme manner.
“Buy now! Less freedom, costs more!”
Now, far be it from me to deprive you or anyone else the right to seek medical care, or to freely develop non-coercive programs to ensure against the costs of catastrophic medical bills. You are free to indulge your altruistic impulses and imagined moral principles to whatever extent you like, up to and including donating all of your time and substance to the cause you claim to hold so dear, if you feel that need. But you need not be so extreme.
As I have suggested elsewhere there was a solution staring the Democrat-kind right in the face if they had only dared to look in the mirror. Because there are many millions more registered Democrats in their age of majority in the U.S. than there are total persons in many of the countries which Democrats regularly pointed to as models of universal and compassionate care. How’s that for an interest group which could do “good” outside of the government coercion realm.
They could set up a Democrat version of the Masons, or Shriners, or Kenighits of Columbus.
Why one wonders then, at least briefly, why did not these many tens of millions of socially conscious, morally superior, altruists, take their sodality group one tiny step further and themselves offer a model health insurance program to any and all who wished to be included in, or who the Demonicrats would choose to allow in. You know, a plan that did not destroy historic liberties, and enslave the unwilling to the dysfunction of people like, say, you.
Surely, many tens of millions of the Democrat-kind could put their heads together and manage to do in a noncoercive manner for themselves and for their human pets what millions fewer Canadians, or Swedes, or whatever example they wished to use, could do with a total population much smaller than that of Democrat voters.
One wonders why these paragons of virtue and compassion and psychological health did not look themselves in the face and get cracking immediately.
Well, one wonders until one realizes what it is that these Democrat sneaks, cheats, nihilists, and manipulators would actually see looking back at them if they were honest.
And then we know both why they would not do so, and why any normal person not them, would balk at sharing expenses with, or taking any direction from them, too.
Jesse Larner has very rarely been here before, over a decade ago and then again a couple of years ago. So why come back and put a comment on a thread that’s almost a half a year old, and inactive otherwise? I can think of quite a few possible reasons.
He or she may just be so fascinated by this particular thread that the motivation to comment was just irresistible.
He or she is going around the blogosphere dumping comments on old threads on this particular topic for some reason, and a search located this post on this blog.
He or she hoped to start a discussion.
He or she hoped NOT to start a discussion, but just to do a typical troll move, which is to try to sneak in arguments on an old thread unanswered, so as to get the last word and a sort of “last touch.”
Or some combination of the above.
There’s a contributor to The Nation and HuffPo who uses the handle ‘Jesse Larner’.
Neo says,
It’s strange. I cannot recall having clicked on a comment recently, if ever, to go to what was said by someone unfamiliar and read something left in a thread I didn’t even remember.
I leave entire threads unread, much less commented on.
But I did, fluke though it was; and then, having done so, saw that I was directly addressed.
Otherwise I would not have bothered to respond. Probably shouldn’t have done so, nonetheless.
DNW,
I’m glad you did respond. What you said is just right, and worth reading. The Great Frog knows I’m with you all the way, but it never occurred to me that the Dems could make it a party requirement that if you want to join the party, or work for the party, or campaign for a Dem with the authorization of the party, they could make a requirement that you must buy into the Democratic Party, Inc.’s health plan, which would pay all of everybody’s health care out of the pooled pay-ins. (Of course they won’t do that. For one thing, it only works if you can hold a gun of some sort to everybody’s head. And for another, why would they make it MORE expensive to join or work for the Party?! –Oh, but you might say that about deciding to become — or to remain — a U.S. citizen. Hm.)
Well, maybe a bit over-the-top, but still. :>))!!
.
Neo,
Interesting that the same name shows up on HuffPo and The Nation.
Julie says,
Hi Julie.
Of course the Demos would not even have to go so far as to make it -strictly speaking – mandatory; if, their own propaganda were to be believed. When you have such a delicious carrot, who needs a stick?
The Democrat party, a private organization, and probably without any major adjustment in law (since there is a Demo part in every state), could simply offer an unbeatably priced, unconditional acceptance non-profit health insurance program. Surely, paragons of personal virtue and attractiveness that these altruism spouting sons of bitches are, wealthy Demo elites would rush to fund and temporarily underwrite the expense of such a program for their deserving brethren, until the those millions of eager and committed rank and file members of the party flocked to put their premium money where their gaping and demanding mouths are.
Again, there are more registered Democrats in the United States than there are total numbers of citizens in some of the health care paradises these clowns have been citing all these years.
What could possibly make such a plan unfeasible? Assuming of course that the average Demo is at no greater risk for a moral hazard, or for an organic predisposition to a auto-generated health condition, or to manifest a festering psychological problem, than are normal – excuse me, non Democrat voting – people.
Yeah, if we van assume that the average Democrat voter and party member is on a physical, and psychological, and moral par with the average Republican, or Libertarian, what could possibly go wrong for the Democrats as they gather in their sheep?
All we have to do is assume that they are normal to begin with, and not composed in large measure of the kind of people they actually are.