Author Topic: [Twenty-seven] states/state attorneys general file lawsuit on health care bill  (Read 32381 times)

Dos Equis

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Supreme Court signals it won't punt on ObamaCare decision
By Lee Ross
Published March 26, 2012
FoxNews.com

One thing was clear out of the Supreme Court's opening session Monday on the federal health care overhaul -- the justices are eager to issue a ruling, and unlikely to punt.

The anticipation over how the court might rule on the merits of the law will have to wait another day, as the justices revealed very little about their views during opening arguments. What came out of the day's 90-minute session -- the first of three days covering four unique challenges -- is that the justices are poised to decide this year on the constitutional validity of the controversial law.

The justices were presented with a challenge Monday that, if upheld, could push the case off until early 2015. The issue before the judges was whether an obscure 1867 tax law prohibits lawsuits, like the ones challenging the health care law, from going forward.

The justices signaled that the technicality would probably not hold up the case, or prevent the justices from issuing a ruling on whether the law's controversial individual mandate is constitutional. The argument over that volatile issue is scheduled for Tuesday.
 
The idea that lawsuits challenging the law could be blocked was held by several lower federal court judges and was assigned to Washington, D.C., lawyer Robert Long to defend Monday. It is premised on the belief that the 1867 law known as the Anti-Injunction Act forbids lawsuits against federal tax policies until after someone has actually paid the tax.

But from the outset of Monday's arguments it was clear the justices weren't too sympathetic to that view because of the language Congress eventually used in crafting the law. The Affordable Care Act says the cost for not complying with the requirement to obtain health insurance is a penalty -- not a tax.

"Congress has nowhere used the word 'tax,'" Justice Stephen Breyer said to Long. "What it says is penalty."

Breyer was hardly the only justice to suggest the designated penalty isn't a tax.

"This is not a revenue-raising measure, because, if it's successful, they won't -- nobody will pay the penalty and there will be no revenue to raise," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

Justice Elena Kagan also noted to Long that there are other parts of the law where the provisions of the AIA are specifically addressed. "It does not say that here. Wouldn't that suggest that Congress meant for a different result to obtain?" she said.

None of the justices seemed to think the AIA bar should be applied, perhaps leading to a unanimous opinion on this issue. There was also much discussion over a very technical question on the appropriate jurisdiction of handling these types of tax challenges.

The justices seemed a bit more divided on this matter, but their resolution of this part of the case shouldn't impact their ability to get to the heart of the health care cases.

Perhaps the most telling exchange of the day came when Solicitor General Don Verrilli presented the government's case.

He argued that the specific language Congress used -- penalty rather than tax -- prevents an AIA inquiry. But Justice Samuel Alito asked how that position can also square with the government's view that when determining whether the ACA is legal under the Constitution's taxing authority, the exact words Congress used are less significant.

"General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax," Alito asked. "Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax. Has the Court ever held that something that is a tax for purposes of the taxing power under the Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act? "

Alito's question suggests that he will further challenge Verrilli on Tuesday.

The tax-versus-penalty issue has been debated and discussed since the ACA passed two years ago. Even Verrilli himself got tripped up in using the nomenclature. In an exchange with Kagan, Verrilli said a person who fails to get insurance and pays the fine wouldn't have to admit to a violation of federal law. Kagan pressed, him asking why that was the case. Twice, he made mention of someone paying a tax. Breyer jumped in to ask, "Why do you keep saying tax?"

Stepping over the laughter in the courtroom, Verrilli clarified himself to say "tax penalty" and thanked the justice for calling the error to his attention.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/26/supreme-court-signals-health-care-case-wont-be-held-up-over-technicality/

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CNN’s Toobin: Supreme Court Was ‘Train Wreck’ for Obama
Tuesday, 27 Mar 2012
By Paul Scicchitano

Following two hours of oral arguments before the Supreme Court today, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin declared “this was a train wreck for the Obama administration. This law looks like it’s going to be struck down.”

Toobin, author of “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court,” said he was forced to reverse his earlier prediction on the case based on the poor performance of U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.

“I’m telling you all of the predictions — including mine — that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong,” Toobin told viewers, adding that Verrilli did a “simply awful job” defending the individual mandate, which was the focus of today’s proceedings.

“He was nervous. He was not well-spoken,” explained Toobin. “The argument got off to a very bad start for the administration and it was really the liberal justices who carried the argument much more than the lawyer.”

Pressed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Toobin acknowledged that the best hope of the Obama administration was that the four liberal justices of the court would be joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. in upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Based on the line of questioning, he said it was unlikely that Justice Anthony Kennedy would provide the swing vote to give the liberals a 5-4 majority.

“I don’t know if they have a fifth vote. I think Kennedy is a lost cause after listening to his comments,” observed Toobin. “Roberts is to me — to what I heard — the only possibility and that would certainly be a big surprise to see him joining with the liberals in such an important case. But based on the comments, I think that’s the only hope for this law being upheld.”

http://www.newsmax.com/US/obamacare-scotus-train-wreck/2012/03/27/id/434015

Dos Equis

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This is good.  She's the same person who predicted Democrats would maintain control of the House right before the 2010 elections. 

Pelosi's specific Supreme Court health care prediction
Posted by
CNN's Kevin Liptak

(CNN) – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi bucked the assessment of Supreme Court analysts and pundits Tuesday by predicting a favorable ruling from the court on President Barack Obama's sweeping health care law.

Speaking at a luncheon meeting in New York, Pelosi predicted the court would uphold the Affordable Care and Prevention Act's constitutionality with a 6-3 decision.

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"I'm predicting 6-3 in favor, but we shall see. It's a lesson in civics, and I respect it. I respect the court and judicial review," Pelosi said. She made the remarks at the Paley Center for Media and video of the event was posted on their website.

Last week, many analysts offered a grave appraisal of the law's chances after hearing oral arguments on various aspects of the Affordable Care and Prevention Act, specifically the constitutionality of the "individual mandate" which requires all citizens to obtain health insurance or pay a fine.

Pelosi said her party was more than willing to go through the process of defending the mandate in courts, and said the law was written to withstand judicial scrutiny.

"We've always respected judicial review, and the Constitution, and we wrote the bill in an iron-clad way in terms of its constitutionality," Pelosi said. "But you never know what the court will do. I have confidence, since we're talking about the law of the land, and our compliance with it, that we will be OK."

The California Democrat said the bills provisions, including allowing young adults to remain on their parents' health insurance plans and disallowing insurance companies to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions, had already benefited more than 80 million Americans.

"We can't roll that back, so we have to find a way to keep it," Pelosi said. "Again, we're speaking in the theoretical. I think the bill will be upheld. But we really do have to find a way to keep what's in the bill."

Pelosi also pointed to aspects of the health care measure that impacted women, including a provision that allows for greater access to contraception. Pelosi labeled the women-specific measures "enormously popular with the public."

Pelosi described a phone call with Obama following the law's passage in 2010.

"The day after it passed the president called us and said, 'Last night when you passed the bill I was happier than when I was elected president of the United States.' What a beautiful thought," she said.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/04/pelosis-specific-supreme-court-health-care-prediction/

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Even Democrats Dislike Most of Obamacare
Wednesday, 11 Apr 2012
By Greg McDonald

Only 39 percent of Democrats say they want Obamacare upheld by the Supreme Court, while some 50 percent say they want parts of it or the whole thing struck down, according to a new poll conducted for Investor’s Business Daily.
 
“Even taking into account that some of those may be liberals who dislike Obamacare because it isn’t more expansive, it’s a striking rejection of the president’s main accomplishment by his own party,” writes the newspaper’s Sean Higgins.
 
The same poll found that in general only 22 percent of Americans say they want the entire law upheld, while 37 percent would like to see all of it struck down.
 
Another 30 percent said they would like to see only the individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance declared unconstitutional.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obamacare-democrats-health-care/2012/04/11/id/435476

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AP Poll:  Just a Third Favor Obama Health Care Law

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/APPoll-HealthCare/2012/06/20/id/442947

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Reuters Poll: 73% of Independents Oppose Obamacare
Sunday, 24 Jun 2012

Most Americans oppose President Barack Obama's healthcare reform even though they strongly support most of its provisions, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Sunday, with the Supreme Court set to rule within days on whether the law should stand.

Fifty-six percent of people are against the healthcare overhaul and 44 percent favor it, according to the online poll conducted from Tuesday through Saturday.

The survey results suggest that Republicans are convincing voters to reject Obama's reform even when they like much of what is in it, such as allowing children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26.

Strong majorities favor most of what is in the law.

A glaring exception to the popular provisions is the "individual mandate," which forces all U.S. residents to own health insurance.

Sixty-one percent of Americans are against the mandate, the issue at the center of the Republicans' contention that the law is unconstitutional, while 39 percent favor it.

"That's really the thing that has come to define the (reform) and is the thing that could potentially allow the Supreme Court to dismantle it if they decide it's not constitutional," Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson said.

In good news for Republicans at November's congressional elections, 45 percent said they were more likely to vote for a member of Congress who campaigned on a platform of repealing the law, versus 26 percent who said it would make them less likely, the survey showed.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the 2010 healthcare reform, Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, this week, possibly as early as Monday.

The political stakes are sky-high on an issue that has galvanized conservative opposition to the Democratic president, and how the court's decision is framed politically could influence the outcome of the November 6 general election.

Support for the provisions of the healthcare law was strong, with a full 82 percent of survey respondents, for example, favoring banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

Sixty-one percent are in favor of allowing children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26 and 72 percent back requiring companies with more than 50 employees to provide insurance for their employees.

PARTISAN DIVISION

Americans are strongly divided along partisan lines. Among Republicans, 86 percent oppose and 14 percent favor the law and Democrats back it by a 3-to-1 margin, 75 percent to 25 percent, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

But in what could be a key indicator for the presidential contest, people who describe themselves as political independents oppose the law by 73 percent to 27 percent.

Opposition among independents has been growing. In a survey conducted in April, two weeks after the Supreme Court heard the case, 63 percent of them opposed the measure, and 37 percent favored it.

"Republicans have won the argument with independents and that's really been the reason that we see the majority of the public opposing it," Jackson said.

Republicans have dominated the political message on healthcare with calls to "repeal and replace" the law, condemned by conservatives as a government intrusion into private industry and the lives of private citizens. It passed in March 2010 with no Republican support in Congress.

Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has promised to repeal the law if he defeats Obama, although he has not offered a plan of his own. Obama, who says he modeled the measure on a healthcare plan Romney passed as governor of Massachusetts, has defended it.

Obama critics - some from within his own party - have also questioned the president for focusing on healthcare reform early in his term instead of doing everything he could to fix the struggling U.S. economy.

Democrats back the measure as an effort to improve the lives of Americans and essential to control spiraling costs that are undermining the country's overall economic health. Healthcare expenditures in the United States neared $2.6 trillion in 2010, over 10 times the $256 billion spent in 1980, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

A good portion of the opposition to the healthcare law is because Americans want more reform, not less of it.

The poll found that a large number of Americans - including about one-third of Republicans and independents who disagree with the law - oppose it because it does not go far enough to fix healthcare.

Seventy-one percent of Republican opponents reject it overall, while 29 percent feel it does not go far enough, while independent opponents are divided 67 percent to 33 percent. Among Democratic opponents, 49 percent reject it overall, and 51 percent wish the measure went further.

"If you add the people that oppose it because they think it doesn't go far enough, you get a majority of Americans, so it doesn't mean that healthcare reform is dead," Jackson said.

There was party division in Americans' view of the individual mandate. Overall, 61 percent of Americans oppose requiring all U.S. residents to own health insurance. Among Republicans, the percentage rose to 81 percent, and it was 73 percent among independents. But a majority of Democrats - 59 percent - favor the individual mandate.

The survey of 1,043 Americans was conducted from June 19-23. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/independents-oppose-healthcare-law/2012/06/24/id/443279

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we warned everyone.

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Liberal Second-Guessing Won’t Make ObamaCare Constitutional
Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 06.24.2012 - 2:56 PM



With only days and perhaps even just a few hours left before the Supreme Court rules on the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act, the second guessing has already begun among Democrats. Though the outcome is known only to the justices and their clerks and secretaries, in the months since the oral arguments revealed there was a good chance it would be overturned, the president’s party has sunk deeper and deeper into depression over the possibility. Though they may yet win, as today’s front-page feature in the New York Times reveals, many on the left are already starting the recriminations, with the White House and the congressional Democrats getting the lion’s share of the blame.
 
The president and congressional leaders such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are being lambasted for not taking the challenge to the bill’s constitutionality seriously as they forced it through the legislature. Pelosi’s response to the suggestion that there was any doubt about its legality was a now famous, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” But though that is a remark that will go down in the history books if the judges say no to ObamaCare, scapegoating her, the president or the Justice Department lawyers who did not anticipate the possibility is a waste of time. So, too, are some other liberal responses, such as liberal law professor Jonathan Turley’s suggestion in Friday’s Washington Post that the problem is that nine is too small a number of judges to make such a momentous decision, a solution Democrats won’t embrace if Mitt Romney wins in November and is the one doing the nominating of the extra judges.
 


The problem wasn’t the tactics pursued by ObamaCare advocates either in court or outside it. The problem was a bill that proposed an expansion of federal power that even the Commerce Clause — that catchall mechanism used to justify every new federal power grab for a century — couldn’t support.
 
The bill did help generate a political earthquake in the form of the Tea Party that led to the Republican landslide in the 2010 midterms that erased the Democratic majority who passed the act. But better advocacy on the part of the bill’s supporters would not have prevented conservatives and libertarian lawyers from bringing forth the successful challenges that two lower federal courts have already accepted.
 
If Democrats like Pelosi couldn’t imagine anyone taking those challenges seriously it is not just because they live in a liberal echo chamber where conservative ideas are viewed with as much contempt as conservative politicians. It is because after nearly 100 years of liberal judicial activism that created the current federal leviathan, they had come to believe there were no limits on that power. If Congress could regulate any kind of commerce, why wouldn’t liberals think that this extended even to commerce that didn’t already exist or even inactivity and thereby make it legal for the government to demand that individuals purchase health insurance?
 
Since for decades liberals have treated a more libertarian approach to the constitution with scorn, why would anyone, especially that former law professor sitting in the White House, have thought differently?
 
Of course, as the Times points out, the constitutional challenge would have been avoided if the legislation had been framed more explicitly as a tax which the federal government has the right to levy. But Obama and Pelosi had a hard enough time getting a Democrat-controlled Congress to pass it without explicitly selling it as a massive tax increase though that is, in effect, what the bill is. In that form, it would never have been adopted.
 
As for Turley’s court-packing scheme, the transparently political nature of his appeal renders it absurd. He’s right that there’s nothing sacred about the number nine but since the current format has been in place since 1869, there’s no reason to change this tradition. Any expansion would be inherently political, an attempt to overturn the current court majority by a president and a Congress that didn’t like their opinions on the constitution. If Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t get away with such an idea in 1938 when he proposed it, does anyone seriously believe Barack Obama or Mitt Romney or any other president in the foreseeable future can do so?
 
The liberal dilemma has no more to do with the number of justices than it does with supposed shortcomings in the strategy adopted by the White House or Congressional Democrats. If the bill goes down this week it will be because a majority on the court have realized that a government that is given the power to invent as well as to regulate commerce is a threat to our liberty. And no clever tactic can make that acceptable to the majority of Americans who oppose ObamaCare or the judges who will vote against it.

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Any day now the decision will be announced. Supposedly if not today, it will be Thursday. Is this correct?

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Any day now the decision will be announced. Supposedly if not today, it will be Thursday. Is this correct?

If not today then by Thursday, not necessarily on Thursday. 

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What happened with the Medicare issue the states were arguing about? 

Soul Crusher

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What happened with the Medicare issue the states were arguing about? 

Sort of struck down, but still there.   Said that states cant get funding pulled if they dont go along a the medicade expansion. 


What a fiasco between this and AZ - a total fiasco. 

Dos Equis

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Sort of struck down, but still there.   Said that states cant get funding pulled if they dont go along a the medicade expansion. 


What a fiasco between this and AZ - a total fiasco. 

Thanks.  Sounds like somewhat of a victory for the states? 

Soul Crusher

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Thanks.  Sounds like somewhat of a victory for the states? 

not really since you are going to have the peeps demanding more free shit and we have already seen how obama thugs it up to the states so he will find ways to punish states not going along w this. 


obama is a ghetto thug and a liar.   He is no different than the lawless gangbangers and drug dealers in chi town.   

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I wouldn't hold my breath. 

The Courts May Yet Destroy Obamacare
by KEITH KOFFLER on DECEMBER 3, 2013

Obamacare is still being challenged in the courts. And the problem presented by one of the challenges is very, very serious.

The argument, which is being heard today by a federal judge in the District of Columbia, is being being brought as part of several cases launched by states like Indiana and Oklahoma as well as business owners and individuals.

You see, Healthcare.gov may have a bigger problem than page load timeouts. According to the text of the Obamacare law, the federal exchange program the website offers to the public is not supposed to hand out subsidies. And yet, without subsidies, Obamacare is not workable.

The Affordable Care Act provides that subsidies will be available to those who “were enrolled in through an exchange established by the State.” But 36 states refused to set up exchanges. And so their citizens must participate in the federal exchanges. And, according to the letter of the law, they can’t have subsidies and have to pay the sticker price for insurance. Which is unaffordable.

Opponents of the suit don’t deny the plain language of the law. They claim that if you look at the law in its entirety, including the provision of a federal exchange, it’s clear that Congress was creating a federal program intended for everyone to get subsidies.

But the climate is bad for such arguments.

The case may well go to the Supreme Court, where there are five justices who tend to take the specific wording of legal documents – like, say, the Constitution – seriously. One of them, John Roberts, will be under extraordinary pressure to reverse the damage he did by failing to agree that the individual mandate was unconstitutional.

What’s more, the suits target the federal nature of the law, which has been shown unworkable so far, particularly with respect to Healthcare.gov. There’s an argument to be made that the law as written would avoid just such a debacle – the state exchanges work much better – and that it is both a logical and legal matter that a federal exchange is ruled out.

And there has been growing outcry, no doubt heard by the Justices, that the administration is implementing the law without regard to its provisions – delaying statutory start dates and so forth – and in general acting without regard to the will of Congress on this and other matters.

Hold onto your seats. The judiciary might just strike down Obamacare.

http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/12/03/courts-destroy-obamacare/

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House Republicans Hire Third Lawyer For Obamacare Lawsuit
The Huffington Post    | By Igor Bobic
Posted: 11/18/2014

House Republicans have hired constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley to lead their lawsuit against President Barack Obama over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

The George Washington University Law School professor announced the news on his blog Monday night. He explained that, as an advocate of the separation of powers, he is concerned about what he views as the excesses of the executive branch.

"Unilateral, unchecked Executive action is precisely the danger that the Framers sought to avoid in our constitutional system. This case represents a long-overdue effort by Congress to resolve fundamental Separation of Powers issues. In that sense, it has more to do with constitutional law than health care law," he said.

The self-described liberal noted that he voted for Obama in 2008 and even supported "national health care." But, Turley added, the House "had me at hello" with the merits of the case.

Republicans charge that the administration acted without congressional authority in delaying the employer mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act. Two previous law firms sought out by Republicans have already dropped the case, fueling criticism that the motion was nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Democrats quickly criticized the hire on Tuesday, noting Turley's many appearances on Fox News, where he frequently criticizes the administration on health care and immigration reform.

"Even for $500-per-hour in taxpayer dollars, Speaker [John] Boehner has had to scour Washington to find a lawyer willing to file this meritless lawsuit against the President," said Drew Hammill, spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "Now, he's hired a TV personality for this latest episode of his distraction and dysfunction. When Speaker Boehner can't legislate his way, he shuts down the government and files lawsuits."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/18/gop-lawsuit-jonathan-turley_n_6178112.html

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Is the Left Helping SCOTUS Destroy Obamacare?
Dismissing the latest legal challenge as a debate over a typo could backfire.
BY SAM BAKER

November 30, 2014 The Supreme Court doesn't care whether you think the latest Obamacare case is ridiculous.

For the second time, there's a very real chance that the Court could tear the Affordable Care Act apart. And, also for the second time, some liberals are making the mistake of treating that existential threat like it's a joke.

Simon Lazarus, senior counsel at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, says Obamacare supporters lost the public-relations battle over the 2012 challenge to the law's individual mandate. He says they made a strategic mistake by waving off the lawsuit in its early days, treating it like a frivolous open-and-shut issue and underestimating its damaging potential.

Long before the Supreme Court agreed to hear the latest challenge, which is aimed at Obamacare's insurance subsidies, Lazarus was urging liberals to take the cases seriously—to avoid making the same mistakes that last time helped challengers define so much of the debate.

And while no one is denying that the subsidies challenge would be devastating to the health care law if it succeeds, some of the rhetoric from the law's defenders could backfire.

The case centers around one line in the Affordable Care Act, which authorizes tax subsidies to flow through insurance exchanges "established by the State." The challengers say Congress only intended to provide subsidies to people whose states set up their own exchanges, and not in the states that left the job up to the federal government.

According to the Left, that line is routinely portrayed as a drafting error, a simple mistake that arose when multiple versions of the Affordable Care Act were hastily crammed into one. "Death by Typo: The Latest Frivolous Attack on Obamacare," read the headline on a Nov. 4 Paul Krugman column.

But by downplaying the challenge in this way, referring to the sentence in question as a "typo" or a "drafting error," Obamacare's supporters risk playing right into the challengers' hands, Lazarus argues. His fear is that this rhetoric is setting the groundwork for the Court's conservative justices to say, in effect, that their hands are tied—that they see they error, are powerless to fix it, and so must dismantle the statute.

"If they see that the entire public discussion in the media assumes that there was a drafting error and that is the problem with the statute, then they can gain greater confidence that they can defuse criticism by saying, 'You're right, there is a drafting error, but it's not up to the courts to correct it,' " Lazarus argued.

That might give them cover to eviscerate the law while providing some insulation from the perception that such a ruling would be nakedly political.

There are two sides to the challengers' case. The first is strictly textual—the statute says "established by the State," case closed. The second and more difficult argument is that Congress actually intended for subsidies to only be available in certain states, making Obamacare unworkable in others. And the "typo" criticism is aimed at the second line of attack.

But Obamacare supporters have a pretty strong argument on the textual side because judges—even strict constructionists like Justice Antonin Scalia—have consistently said that courts should read the entire law as one unit when handling questions of statutory interpretation. And if you read the whole Affordable Care Act, taken together, the "established by the State" line loses its clarity.

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This is the crux of the Justice Department's argument, and Lazarus said it's the stronger one: Essentially, not to concede that Congress wrote something, intentionally or not, that looks like it limits subsidies to state-run exchanges. What Congress wrote, he argues, is the entire ACA, and focusing the analysis at that level makes it less important to figure out whether "established by the State" was a mistake and whether it's one the courts can correct.

"The Affordable Care Act has significant textual provisions that collide directly with the opponents' interpretation," he said.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/is-the-left-helping-scotus-destroy-obamacare-20141130

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The Latest Gruber Video Could be the Most Damaging of All
by KEITH KOFFLER on DECEMBER 3, 2014

I know, another Jonathan Gruber video. That’s so yesterday, like Ebola, you’re thinking. But this one may be  worse than the derisive pomposity and shameless admissions of deception that marked Gruber’s previous performances.

Because in the new video, Gruber provides stunning evidence favoring the side that is seeking to destroy Obamacare in a case headed to the Supreme Court.

Here’s what he said in January 2012:

If you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying to your citizens, “you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country.”

Here’s why this is so important.

The Supreme Court agreed last month to hear arguments in a case that claims subsidies for people under Obamacare are only for people who, as spelled out in the law, use an exchange established by a state. The infamous federal exchange was really a backup mechanism that the law’s writers didn’t expect to be used because, you know, what state would refuse federal subsidies and fail to set up an exchange?

Thirty six, as it turned out. So as you can see, if people in these states can’t get subsidies because of a ruling by the Supreme Court, a central component of Obamacare falls apart, and possibly the law itself.

Nobody contests the language of the law. Liberals claim, though, that the “intent” of the Affordable Care Act was to cover everybody, so the law’s clear text is moot. But what Gruber, the central architect of the law – despite efforts by the administration and top Democrats to pretend he was merely making runs for  pizza and coffee – seems to be confirming is that, yes, this is what the law says, and this is the effect: You don’t set up a state exchange, your citizens don’t get subsidies.

The Court is expected to rule in the spring. It apparently is too late to include the video as evidence in the case. But the Justices, who are known to read newspapers and watch TV, may well be aware of this video, and influenced by its contest.

Here are Gruber’s remarks, followed by some good commentary by a panel on Fox.

http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2014/12/03/latest-gruber-video-damaging/


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Let's see if they get it right this time.

As Supreme Court takes up ObamaCare, GOP offers alternatives, Dems warn of 'massive damage’
Published March 04, 2015
FoxNews.com

Congressional Republicans are proposing long and short-term alternatives to ObamaCare as the Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments Wednesday in a case that has the potential to unravel the health care law.

The plaintiffs, four Virginia residents, argue that Americans who bought insurance through the federal ObamaCare exchange are not entitled to subsidies because the law says only those who bought policies in state exchanges are eligible.

At least 5.5 million Americans last year bought insurance on the federal exchange and received the subsidies.

Both sides in the case -- known as King v. Burwell -- generally agree that if the high court decides that millions of recipients are no longer eligible, they likely will no longer be able to afford insurance under ObamaCare and exit the system.

However, whether their departure would topple the entire health care law remains a matter of debate ahead of the expected high court ruling by June.

Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said nullifying the subsidies would cause "massive damage to our health care system" and that the administration would have no way to fix it.

The administration and Democrats who enacted the 2010 law over unanimous GOP opposition also largely back studies showing the number of people who would loses the subsidies, in the form of tax credits, is as high as 7.5 million.

And a recent analysis by the health care firm Avalere found that those who would lose their subsidies as a result of the court ruling would have their premiums increase an average 225 percent.

Ed Haislmaier, a health care policy expert with the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, on Tuesday predicated some fallout, or “dislocation’ but not to such an extent.

“Is the sky going to fall?” he asked. “No, but it’s probably going to rain in some places.”

Several top Capitol Hill Republicans have in the past few days announced pending, short-term alternatives if the court invalidates the subsidies for residents of the 34 states that use the federal ObamaCare exchange, not their own.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said last week that his plan will set the stage for a “more permanent fix” but did not provide specifics.

On Sunday, Hatch was joined by fellow GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and John Barrasso of Wyoming in a Washington Post opinion piece saying they have a plan.

“We would provide financial assistance to help Americans keep the coverage they picked,” the senators wrote. "It would be unfair to allow families to lose their coverage, particularly in the middle of the year."

However, they also provided no specifics on how to pay for the lost subsidies -- estimated at $36.1 billion.

Most of the 34 states in question are GOP-run and represented in Congress by Republicans.

On Tuesday, an opinion offering by Reps. John Kline, R-Minn., Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Fred Upton, R-Mich., appeared in The Wall Street Journal also presenting alternatives - but in more detail.

“No family should pay for this administration’s overreach,” the congressmen, chairmen, respectively, of the House committees on Education and Workforce, Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce wrote.

“That is why House Republicans have formed a working group to propose a way out for the affected states if the court rules against the administration.”

The congressmen said their ObamaCare “off-ramp” will in part allow states to opt out of coverage requirements that are driving up costs, let Americans buy the policies they want and make insurers compete for customers, rather than force Americans to buy a government-approved health plan “under the threat of IRS fines.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/03/04/as-supreme-court-takes-up-obamacare-gop-offers-solutions-dems-warm-massive/?intcmp=latestnews

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Federal Judge Blasts Obama Lawyers Arguing Obamacare Case

Image: Federal Judge Blasts Obama Lawyers Arguing Obamacare Case  U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer. (Charles Dharapak/AP) 
 Thursday, 28 May 2015

A U.S. judge on Thursday blasted the Obama administration's motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives over the implementation of the Democratic president's signature healthcare law.

Republicans in the House filed a lawsuit in November, saying administration officials unlawfully bypassed Congress.

At issue are executive changes authorizing Treasury payments to healthcare insurers without the funding being agreed by Congress and delaying implementation of the law's employer mandate, which required employers with more than 50 employees to provide healthcare coverage.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, appointed by Obama's predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, repeatedly interrupted U.S. Justice Department lawyer Joel McElvain during the hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Justice Department lawyers argue that the House lacks standing to sue, citing a section of U.S. law that means the House would have to prove it has been directly harmed.

"So it is your position that if the House of Representatives affirmatively voted not to fund something ... then that vote can be ignored by the administration, because after all, no one can sue them?" she asked.

McElvain argued that the merits of the case were not being discussed at the hearing, and that any perceived injury was "abstract."

"I'm not asking you to give me your brief. I want you to explain ... why it's not an insult to the Constitution?" Collyer said.

McElvain argued that the House could pass new legislation if it disagreed with the administration's changes, which he said were legal under "pre-existing permanent appropriation."

At another point, Collyer admonished McElvain: "You can't just shake your head and not deal with the question."

The lawsuit is one of a flurry filed against the Obama administration in the past few months challenging executive actions on healthcare and immigration as Republicans seek to amp up pressure on the president.

Jonathan Turley, a lawyer for the House Republicans, said the lawsuit should go forward to show the power of the purse "should not be decorative."

The judge, while appearing sympathetic to the Republicans' decision to bring the lawsuit, said she had not yet decided on the standing issue before her.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obamacare-lawsuit-federal-judge/2015/05/28/id/647231/#ixzz3bT4QebWK

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Good thing the former "constitutional law professor" respects the separation of powers. 

Obama says Supreme Court should never have taken up health law case, in blunt challenge
Published June 08, 2015
FoxNews.com

President Obama bluntly challenged the Supreme Court over a pending ruling on the validity of ObamaCare subsidies, complaining Monday that the court should never have taken up the case -- and warning that a ruling against subsidies would be a "twisted interpretation" of the law.

The president and his administration's legal team for months have fought the Affordable Care Act court challenge, which is over whether people who enrolled through the federal HealthCare.gov are entitled to subsidies.

But the president's comments on Monday, during a press conference on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Germany, were perhaps his toughest to date. He strongly suggested the court would be running afoul of established legal guidance if it rules against the administration, and took the rare step of saying the court should have stayed out of this fight.

"This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn't even have been taken up," Obama said.

The administration has argued in court that the subsidies are valid through both state-run exchanges and exchanges run through HealthCare.gov. Foes argue that the Affordable Care Act stipulates subsidies are only intended for those buying insurance on state-run exchanges.

The court decision, expected any day, could have far-reaching implications because millions would lose their insurance if the court rules against the administration.

Yet the Obama administration has faced criticism for declining the spell out what its contingency plan is if the court rules that way, instead voicing confidence that the Supreme Court will keep the program as is.

Obama again voiced that confidence on Monday, and urged the court not to rule otherwise.

He said it's safe to "assume" the court will do what most legal scholars expect and "play it straight." Obama said it has been well-documented that Congress never intended to exclude people who went through the federal exchange.

To rule the other way, the president said, would be a "contorted reading of the statute" and a "twisted interpretation."

But if that does happen, Obama said, "that throws off how that exchange operates" and millions of people would lose subsidies.

"It's a bad idea," Obama said.

The president went on to mount a robust defense of the law itself, saying "none" of the alleged "horrors" associated with ObamaCare have "come to pass."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/08/obama-says-supreme-court-should-never-have-taken-up-health-law-case-in-blunt/

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Scalia is right:  SCOTUScare.

Supreme Court upholds ObamaCare subsidies
Published June 25, 2015
FoxNews.com

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld ObamaCare subsidies nationwide, in the second major court victory for President Obama on his signature health care law.

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that subsidies are valid even in states that did not set up their own insurance exchanges.

A ruling against the administration would have threatened subsidies worth millions in nearly three-dozen states and imperiled the program itself. For months, though, the administration said it had no back-up plans, confident the Supreme Court would rule in its favor.

With yet another challenge to ObamaCare now cleared away, Obama urged critics to move on.

"The Affordable Care Act is here to stay," he declared in the Rose Garden.

But Republicans continued to blast the program, and vowed to keep up the fight. "ObamaCare is fundamentally broken, increasing health care costs for millions of Americans. Today's ruling doesn't change that fact," House Speaker John Boehner said. "[W]e will continue our efforts to repeal the law and replace it with patient-centered solutions that meet the needs of seniors, small business owners, and middle-class families."

The Supreme Court had previously upheld the law's individual mandate in 2012, in a 5-4 decision. This time, the justices tackled the law's tax credits and ruled that subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive do not depend on where they live.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who was the key vote in 2012, again voted with his liberal colleagues in support of the law. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a dissenter in 2012, was part of the majority on Thursday.

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

Conservative-leaning justices, though, issued a scathing dissent to the decision, referencing the several times the high court has had to rule on the health law.

"We should just start calling this law SCOTUScare," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The challenge devised by opponents of the law centered on four words -- established by the state -- in the more than 900-page law. The passage technically said subsidies were for those exchanges established by the state.

The law's opponents argued that the vast majority of people who now get help paying for their insurance premiums are, therefore, ineligible for their federal tax credits. That is because roughly three dozen states opted against creating their own health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges, and instead rely on the federal Healthcare.gov to help people find coverage if they don't get insurance through their jobs or the government.

In the challengers' view, the phrase "established by the state" demonstrated that subsidies were to be available only to people in states that set up their own exchanges. Those words cannot refer to exchanges established by the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees Healthcare.gov, the opponents argued.

But the majority opinion effectively said Congress intended the subsidies to be available for all.

"Had Congress meant to limit tax credits to State Exchanges, it likely would have done so in the definition of 'applicable taxpayer' or in some other prominent manner," Roberts wrote. "In this instance, the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase."

He added: "Those credits are necessary for the Federal Exchanges to function like their State Exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid."

Scalia wrote that if that's the case, "words no longer have meaning."

Nationally, 10.2 million people have signed up for health insurance under the Obama health overhaul. That includes the 8.7 million people who are receiving an average subsidy of $272 a month to help pay their insurance premiums.

Of those receiving subsidies, 6.4 million people were at risk of losing that aid because they live in states that did not set up their own health insurance exchanges.

The case is King v. Burwell, 14-114.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/25/supreme-court-upholds-obamacare-subsidies/