Well, “conservative” Justices. The liberal justices, some of whom would prefer it if they’d taken an oath to the Canadian or South African Constitutions, one imagines, believe there’s no need to wreck all the goodly social justice just because those well-intentioned, moral legislators who pushed it on us failed to include a severability clause and accidentally overstepped their authority with respect to the (hoary, flawed) Constitution.
After all, what’s the High Court for if not to provide a sometimes clumsy legislative majority with the proper sculpting and legal fixes to their otherwise just and righteous laws? LA Times:
The Supreme Court’s conservative justices said Wednesday they are prepared to strike down President Obama’s healthcare law entirely.
Picking up where they left off Tuesday, the conservatives said they thought a decision striking down the law’s controversial individual mandate to purchase health insurance means the whole statute should fall with it.
The court’s conservatives sounded as though they had determined for themselves that the 2,700-page measure must be declared unconstitutional.
“One way or another, Congress will have to revisit it in toto,” said Justice Antonin Scalia.
Agreeing, Justice Anthony Kennedy said it would be an “extreme proposition” to allow the various insurance regulations to stand after the mandate was struck down.
Meanwhile, the court’s liberal justices argued for restraint. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the court should do a “salvage job,” not undertake a “wrecking operation.” But she looked to be out-voted.
[…]
An Obama administration lawyer, urging caution, said it would be “extraordinary” for the court to throw out the entire law. About 2.5 million young people under age 26 are on their parents’ insurance now because of the new law. If it were struck down entirely, “2.5 million of them would be thrown off the insurance rolls,” said Edwin Kneedler.
The administration indicated it was prepared to accept a ruling that some of the insurance reforms should fall if the mandate were struck down. For example, insurers would not be required to sell coverage to people with preexisting conditions. But Kneedler, a deputy solicitor general, said the court should go no further.
But the court’s conservatives said the law was passed as a package and must fall as a package.
See? There’s that far-right extremist conservatism again, insisting that laws must be followed to the letter, and not simply be ignored to accommodate the spirit of “social justice”.
They fetishize a document, and yet they care not for 26-year-old children forced (by choice) to live without health insurance! It’s an abomination. And I think it is the kind of decision, should this be the Court’s final ruling, that, like Citizens United before it, suggests that the Court can no longer be trusted to act compassionately, and can therefore be ignored.
For the greater good.
After all: the ruling is just words. And the only power they have, really, resides in our willingness to accept them and/or enforce them. But who says we have to do that…?
Picking up where they left off Tuesday, the conservatives said they thought a decision striking down the law’s controversial individual mandate to purchase health insurance means the whole statute should fall with it.
oh please oh please oh please
let’s hope this isn’t just the LA Times in a fit of libtard hyperventilation
I wouldn’t count out misdirection, George.
It is stunning to me that things have gotten this far to begin with. Stunning that members of SCOTUS would even consider such moves that in the end, have no other purpose than to destroy the very country and constitution they have sworn a sacred duty to defend.
I’ll tell you folks, if the fact that all of these things that we see and discuss here ; if the very fact that we actually are having to have these discussions to begin with, isn’t proof positive that our nation and everything we hold dear isn’t in the gravest danger it has ever faced, then I don’t know what is.
meya emails to say that if OBarryCare is struck down in its entirety constitutionality is still determined by original intent.
I kid.
Please ponder and comment on how this will impact the validity of the ….waivers ….?
Am I wrong to worry that the laughable arguments presented by the Oministration are setting us up for something worse?
Because it became clear yesterday as I listened to Hewitt’s play-by-play that a huge diff between Obamacare and Medicare/Medicaid is that the latter is Constitutional because it’s paid for by congressional taxing authority whereas Obamacare is paid for directly by individuals.
ERGO, the argument must go, IT’S MEDICAID ALL AROUND!
I mean, Hugh was able to spew a cogent argument FOR Obamacare just off the top of his head, just to see if he could do it better than whazzisface. They were speculating that Obama must had told the guy to “throw the case,” because otherwise, how could these arguments be THAT bad? This was the best they could muster?
I’m torn between “please don’t throw me into that brier patch” and “Satan does not know the mind of God,” i.e., they’re so far Left that they cannot see how absurd their position is.
Over at NRO, there are some suggestions that perhaps Justice Sotomayor is leaning towards striking it all down as well. They also speculate that Chief Justice Roberts is trying to craft something to avoid a 5-4 vote if that is possible. Justice Scalia at one point called out the venality of the “Cornhusker Kickback”, bless his heart.
Whatever happens, the only thing that is absolutely clear is that this was and is a horrible piece of legislation that has been bollixed up from the beginning.
To me this is reason enough to toss the whole law. If a law is in actuality a volume of laws that is so large that the Justices are not going to read it (as Breyer? says elsewhere), and the government attorney states proudly that the law is too large to be examined by the court.
Rush is taking it from there.
I think it is imperative that we at least save “The Small Animal Administration.”*
Because a Wise Latina takes the power she needs, to do what she decides is wise.
Can you find Biosimilarity in there? What is that?
There’s also the point that if it’s so all-fired important that people be mandated to buy medical insurance to eliminate free-loading, WTF WITH THE WAIVERS?
It would be nice if they revealed Obamacare not only as incoherent and illogical, but also as venal and corrupt, ab initio.
Oops! Sorry DaveJ. You already raised the waiver thing.
So being unwilling to concede the harm that will come to the 2.6 million “kids” now on their parents’ insurance is an unprincipled position?
With my usual pessimism, I predicted a short while ago that by 2020 a president would sign into law single-payer socialized medicine. It will be a Republican president.
At any rate, the next fight will be something like “See? We told you single-payer was the only way.” A variation on “Medicaid for everyone!” Let’s hope the abomination is thrown out as a whole, because there are persuasive cases made that chipping away at ACA piecemeal makes it politically more difficult to dismantle. Defunding ACA might be easier politically if the damn thing is only partly quashed by SCOTUS.
Yup. As soon as Obamacare gets overturned, the narrative will change to one of “half-measures don’t work; we need Universal Single-Payer for everyone.”
Almost makes you wonder if that wasn’t the plan all along.
That was a joke, btw. I’m as excited about the potential for throwing this out as anyone. I joined the GOP after years of being a GOP voting independent in March, 2010. It was my domestic political 9/11.
Biosimilars are how Obama screwed patent holders and potentially endangered patients so as to reward favored donors.
Good luck getting that one passed.
In fact, I suspect that if Democrats try to go that route — or show that they will, if given the legislative opportunity — they’ll have a hard time winning close elections.
Jeff, the formatting has “See? There’s that far-right extremist conservatism again, insisting that laws must be followed to the letter, and not simply be ignored to accommodate the spirit of “social justice” within the blockquote, where it doesn’t appear to go.
Complex Parliamentary Shenanigans would be a good name for a rock band.
In this parade of insanitys I missed than one completely Pablo.
Thanks, sdferr. Fixed.
<zips lip to avoid jinxing>
My apologies in advance if I missed the point being made in comments on another thread, but it seems to me that a huge point/ issue hasn’t been pushed at in the court arguments.
Last month I watched a video by a woman named Elizabeth Price Foley, of the Institute for Justice. Basically, her point that the individual mandate violates the principal of mutual assent in contract law; in short, that you can’t force people into signing contracts, which the individual mandate would do.
This in and of itself seems to be a ‘game over’ argument. Why isn’t it being vigorously pursued?
I saw that same video, and as I understand it it’s because those were not the arguments raised by the states’ attorneys general or other parties to the case under deliberation.
Mc4ever59, I think it’s implicit in the broader argument that Congress can’t force people to buy a product from a private vendor. The purchase is, after all, a contract — whether written or implied.
Justice Breyer has a little kumbaya moment, which the government man dismisses out of hand and Scalia mocks.
Unrealistic Pipe Dreams WBAGNFARB.
McGehee and mt-molehill; thanks for the clarifications.
Heh, in my zeal to use a club against the liberal hordes that seemed to be just lying around, it never occured to me as to why it was just lying around.
And a contract entered under duress is…invalid.
mv, we had to pass it to find out what’s in it. I’ve got a BIL in the biz who found out that cutting the market out from under one of his drugs was in it.
And a contract entered under duress is…
invalid.Are you serious? Are you serious?Nancy Pelosi fixed that for you.
this law turns everyone into invalids
“Are you serious?”
As a heart attack.
chop chop
” George Orwell says March 28, 2012 at 12:34 pm
And a contract entered under duress is…invalid. Are you serious? Are you serious?
Nancy Pelosi fixed that for you.”
Nancy Pelosi can’t fix nothing because they took her little hammer away.
Nacy Pelosi’s new theme song is: ” If I had a hammer….I would hammer in the mornin’, I’d hammer in the evenin’ all over this la-aaaaaaaannd! “
The Hill: White House has no contingency plans if health law is tossed
OMG!!! Whatever shall we do about the poor, downtrodden 26 year olds forced to live on their own.
You have to be kidding me with such nonsense.
You know what I never see referenced on this topic ? Reconciliation. Now I know SCOTUS does not normally address the rules and processes internal to another branch of government. However.
There should really not even be an argument over severability. The fact is that the ONLY way this law passed was through procedural shenanigans claiming that the bill would reduce the deficit and so was eligible to be passed using reconciliation. The CBO has laid bare this fabrication, now clearly showing that Obamacare will ADD $200 Billion per year to the deficit and I doubt for a second that figure is even close to the truth.
So now you consider severing the only real revenue generating portion of the bill and I don’t see how anyone can conclude that this law can be allowed to stand without it. If the exact same bill came up in 2009 without the mandate, it could never have been passed by reconciliation and it sure wasn’t going to pass with Scott Brown’s vote, the guy elected by one of the most liberal, Democrat dominated states in the country to prevent that very thing.
How is that NOT relevant ?