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Judge Declares Obamacare Unconstitutional
Big breaking news out of Texas:
Published in GeneralObamacare was struck down by a Texas federal judge in a ruling that casts uncertainty on insurance coverage for millions of U.S. residents.
The decision Friday finding the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional comes just before the end of a six-week open enrollment period for the program in 2019 and underscores a divide between Republicans who have long sought to invalidate the law and Democrats who fought to keep it in place.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth agreed with a coalition of Republican states led by Texas that he had to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act, the signature health-care overhaul by President Barack Obama, after Congress last year zeroed out a key provision — the tax penalty for not complying with the requirement to buy insurance. The decision is almost certain to be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court…
Texas and an alliance of 19 states argued to the judge that they’ve been harmed by an increase in the number of people on state-supported insurance rolls. They claimed that when Congress repealed the tax penalty last year, it eliminated the U.S. Supreme Court’s rationale for finding the ACA constitutional in 2012.
The Texas judge agreed.
“The remainder of the ACA is non-severable from the individual mandate, meaning that the Act must be invalidated in whole,” O’Connor wrote.
I stand with you on the attitude of hopes being dashed.
After all, how hard would it be for Mueller to decide this Texas’ Federal Judge’s decision came about due to Russian collusion?
New Justice Kavanaugh introduced that idea earlier. Both he and Roberts will probably feel the need to defend what they helped birth.
Amen.
I think of health insurance as a right like a nice cup of tea is a right: I have a right to buy it for myself if I want to.
Obamacare literally made it illegal to exercise that right.
delete
https://spectator.org/federal-judge-rules-obamacare-unconstitutional/
Excellent. This clears it up. The individual mandate still exists. The GOP Congress didn’t kill it, contrary to my misunderstanding; it only killed the tax penalty, leaving the mandate in place. Now that it’s not a tax, with the Roberts decision as a premise, the mandate needs to go. It is also unseverable logically and financially from the rest of the law, so the whole thing needs to go. It makes sense. A good ruling.
What does that even mean? If there’s no penalty whatsoever for ignoring the mandate, in what sense is it really a mandate? It’s more like a suggestion.
Is there any precedent for Congress passing a law with no penalties or sanctions attached? It seems almost intrinsic to the definition of a law that it specify some sort of punishment for violating it.
Or, Roberts could rule as follows:
Whether you agree or not, mark my words: I predict this is how the Court will rule on the issue. You heard it here first!
Seems possible. He’s not a very good textualist or originalist, is he? The meaning of the law is just the legal structures it sets up, so the mandate is repealed when its penalty is repealed. (That’s how I think of how he thinks, but I’m no expert.)
LOL. Collusion is possible. We cannot rule it out. This has Putin’s fingerprints all over it.
This is the guy that found the Gruber video.
link
The Republicans tried repeal, but one selfish, egocentric Trump-hater voted against repeal as personal payback to The Donald . . .
It makes me crazy.
It was passed unethically. What more does he need?
This is a side point – but an important one. The MSM reports I’ve watched have all deliberately pointed out the judge is GW Bush appointee and a “conservative.” I have never once heard any ruling from any judge ever ruled as being “liberal.” This is how the MSM selectively shades its reporting. So even as they give us the facts, they are also trying to tell us what is good and what is bad. We poor listeners are not capable of drawing a judgement on our own.
Similarly, reports (also from Texas) about death of an illegal immigrant child of seven (brought here by her father from Guatemala) while in custody are all focusing Robert “Beto” O’Rourke’s outrage, and smoothing over the fact that the child should have never been here in the first place.
With the MSM, it’s as much about what they don’t tell us as why they do tell us.
The guy that found the Gruber tapes is just killing it on Twitter today.
Rich Weinstein
I hear she died of dehydration, despite authorities air lifting her to a hospital and going to extreme measures to save her. Didn’t hear that from the Fake News either, did you?
As far as the tragedy of that child’s death, to die of thirst and de-hydration usually indicates that a kid has not had water for a day or two, not the 8 hours that the kid had been held by Border patrol.
Laws and regulations with no teeth are pretty common. An example would be the Texas texting and driving law.
Important stuff.
A tax bill, according to Roberts, but originating in the Senate.
Banning health insurance, literally.
Piles of lies about keeping your old plan, etc.
Senate supermajority by means of Al Franken’s election, in which the percentage of felons illegally voting for Democrats was confirmed to result in a larger number of votes than Franken’s margin of victory.
If McCain thought that there wasn’t going to be universal coverage anymore, passed on a bipartisan basis, after the skinny repeal, he was crazy.
A Republican-led form of universal multi payer was the best way to slow down socialism in this country.
His son-in-law, Ben Dominich new all of this stuff cold.
It makes me sick.
How so?
Sounds like a clear and well-defined penalty to me.
The problem is that although these state-legislated statutes exist in many states, they are rarely enforced. When a young woman slammed into the rear of my passenger van, she was on the phone when she exited her sports car. She remained on the phone for most of the next 45 minutes. She very reluctantly put the phone down when the police officer wanted her account of the accident.
My insurer was not interested in pulling up her phone records. The one satisfaction I took was while she had totalled the front of the car she was in, my van was left barely scratched.