Roberts vs Obama: Affordable Health Care Act goes to SCOTUS

This deserves its own thread.

Here's an article urging Roberts to be all John Marshall.

Ezra Klein breaks it down.

been kinda taking it as a foregone conclusion that the mandate is gonna stand but eh who knows

I don't understand why this thing needed three-day hearings.

Johnny Robbs would probably love to get everyone else on board with the Anti-Injunction Act punt and not have to deal with this now.

i'd like to hear al franken do color commentary on this

One weird quirk of this (Anti-Injunction Act) provision is that neither the defendants or plaintiffs think it applies: Both sides think the Court should be able to rule right now . So the court appointed an outside lawyer, Robert Long, to argue on their behalf.

This kinda jumped out at me. I'm not a SCOTUS geek but this seems strange to me, i didn't know the court could hire a lawyer to argue on its own behalf??

see, i actually thought 6 hours dedicated to these 4 issues, spread out over 3 days), was kind of short! 2 hours to argue the individual mandate?

lose your healthcare with this one weird quirk

hey if Rehnquist were still chief he'd time counsel with a stopwatch

part of Digby critique of Ezra Klein:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/obamacare-waiting-for-test-results.html

Ezra's analysis yesterday was a dispassionate look at the political strategies of both Parties to explain where this argument would logically lead. And the upshot is that the GOP would be smart to get onboard with Obamacare if they want to destroy Medicare because otherwise the crazy liberals will somehow ram through single payer. (Why he thinks that's going to happen, I don't know. The last I heard from all the Very Serious People was that the ACA was the last chance for health care reform for a generation.)

well Z S almost everything else in front of SCOTUS gets an hour of oral arguments, with 1/2 an hour for each side (you probably know this). And usually the solicitors don't get very far into their prepared arguments before the asshole justices start asking goofy questions.

Audio and transcript from today's session available already:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-398-Monday

Washington Post re this morning:

Just because the penalty is “being collected in the same manner of a tax doesn’t automatically mean it’s a tax,” said Justice Stephen G. Breyer, “particularly since the purpose of the Anti-Injunction Act is to prevent interference with the revenue stream.” This legal challenge does not interfere with revenue collection, Breyer added.

Justice Antonin Scalia appeared to agree. As a matter of principle, he said, the courts should not be deprived of jurisdiction in cases unless the reasoning is very clear. “I find it hard to think this is clear, whatever else it is,” Scalia said.

see, i actually thought 6 hours dedicated to these 4 issues, spread out over 3 days), was kind of short! 2 hours to argue the individual mandate?

― 1986 tallest hair contest (Z S), Monday, March 26, 2012 12:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

most of the war is waged in the briefs and other paperwork, the oral argument is viewed by many as a formality (see clarence thomas)

Although they ask a lot of questions (except for Clarence who has not spoken on the bench since 2006)

NY Times re this morning:

The justices appeared receptive to arguments that the court could hear the case now, suggesting they will reject the argument made by an outside lawyer that it is too soon to rule.

I've heard most of today's testimony and it's mind-numbing; the only quasi-gotcha moment was the Alito moment that the NYT quoted.

well nobody really wants to be arguing today's topic

hope Santorum brings his etch-a-sketch tomorrow

http://supremecourthaiku.com/blog1/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Supreme_Court_US_20101.jpg

HAI

What's the reasoning behind the predictions that the court will most likely uphold the mandate?

Ever-popular "wrong side of history"-based jurisprudence?

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/articles/article/27/27624/Supreme_Court-R_jpg_635x345_crop-smart_upscale_q85.jpg

What's the reasoning behind the predictions that the court will most likely uphold the mandate?

- Respect for stare decisis
- John Roberts' purported obsession with role in history
- Expansive view of Commerce Clause legislation since FDR

awww look at Sotomayor. Naturally Slobbo is scowling.

SCROTUS

lol

Dahlia Lithwick: boring is what SCOTUS does best:

It’s unlikely the court will simply boot this case down the road. (At the end of the morning’s argument, Chief Justice Roberts thanks Long for stepping in and says, “We will continue argument in this case tomorrow.” Translation: The show will go on. And now it’s for reals.), One question is why we went to all the trouble of briefing, arguing, and roping someone in to defend the Anti-Injunction Act, if the court had every intention of blowing off the first gate and hearing all three days worth of argument. That’s the wrong question. The court actually did what it does best this morning—reading complex old statutes (when Kennedy asked Long why the wording of the Anti-Injunction Act was so weird, Long basically replied that’s how people wrote back in 1867), asking practical questions, and reaching what looked to be nearly universal agreement that they’ll hear the case this year. While protestors outside were hollering about religion and freedom, the justices were boring those of us inside almost senseless with statutory construction. And sometimes, check that, most of the time, boring is what the justices do best.

What's the reasoning behind the predictions that the court will most likely uphold the mandate?

Also, getting this huge deal out of the way frees Roberts to work his conservative mojo in less conspicuous but potentially equally disastrous ways.

The mandate stuff comes up tomorrow, iirc.

- Respect for stare decisis
- John Roberts' purported obsession with role in history
- Expansive view of Commerce Clause legislation since FDR

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 26, 2012 6:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

#1 would imply that SCOTUS doesn't like overturning lower court decisions, which I don't think is true.
#3 is not convincing, since the Rehnquist court started pushing back against the commerce clause for the first time since FDR, and the court has only grown more conservative since.

oh I agree! I'm just posting the most commonly cited arguments. I'm especially skeptical of #3.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/lawyers-opposing-health-care-law-cite-kidswithpree,27761/

hurting: http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/101842/supreme-court-health-care-prediction-aba-survey-lopez

Kevin Drum answers the broccoli question.

the broccoli test is really silly because the markets for healthcare and the broccoli are not at all alike

the most obvious: a person can go her whole life without participating in the broccoli market. a person can never, ever, ever go her whole life without participating in the healthcare market.

But if everyone ate broccoli, we'd all be healthier. So the non-broccoli eaters are a drag on the healthy broccoli-eating segment of the population and thus indirectly connected to the broccoli economy.

(Is this the broccoli argument?)

well how would the non-broccoli eaters affect the economy of broccoli itself?

the broccoli argument is that if congress can force everybody to get health insurance, then congress could also force everybody to buy broccoli.

it's stupid. nobody complains that it's an invasion of their civil rights that the government requires you to buy car insurance if you have a car

yup. tea party loon on the radio this morning was yelling "why should i pay for your health care?" um, it's insurance, that's how it works. that's why you still pay money if you're never ill/in an accident/have your house broken into - you pay for the cumulative cost of everyone's coverage.

http://www.healthywriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/broccoli.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KsXKPR7iS3c/TGxcG4dT9sI/AAAAAAAAC7c/8bRNyg0VCPY/s1600/do_not_want.jpg

it's stupid. nobody complains that it's an invasion of their civil rights that the government requires you to buy car insurance if you have a car

― dayo, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 12:55 (49 minutes ago) Permalink

Well the counterargument to this is (1) car insurance is a state law issue, and states aren't constitutionally limited in their powers the way the federal government is supposed to be (except to the extent of their own state constitutions, obv) and (2) you don't have to buy a car. And also (3) the *official* argument against the mandate is not that it's an "invasion of civil rights" but that it's an overextension of federal powers.

They should have just called it a tax (but then it might not have passed Congress)

yeah I was just venting at some of the right wing talking points on this xp

more guessing about what the Court could do on another issue other than the mandate

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/medicaid-big-sleeper-supreme-court

For decades, Congress has implemented national programs not by explicitly forcing the states to go along, but by making funding available only to those states that agree to follow federal rules. Critics have long argued that this is a subterfuge: Congress does this in cases where they don't have the constitutional power to make a program mandatory on a national basis, so instead they extort cooperation by sucking out tax dollars from the states and then agreeing to give them back only if the states go along. But subterfuge or not, courts have always ruled that this is constitutional.

So if the Supreme Court overturned the Medicaid changes, it would be a genuine earthquake. At worst, it would make hundreds of programs instantly unconstitutional and expel the federal government from playing a role in dozens of policy areas. At best, the federal government could still start programs this way, but could never change them once they'd become entrenched and were no longer "optional." This would freeze policy in place in a way that would be disastrous.

This, of course, is why most observers haven't paid a lot of attention to this part of the case: it's nearly inconceivable that the court is willing to produce this kind of bedlam. It would overturn decades of very clear precedent and produce chaos at both the state and federal levels. And unlike overturning the mandate, overturning Congress's ability to fund national programs this way would quite likely provoke a genuine constitutional crisis

yeah that's not gonna happen

yeah they could do that but I think even in the most crusty originalist's mind primary job of the SCOTUS is probably something the near opposite of "provoke a genuine constitutional crisis."

The Robert's court overriding ideology seems to be "let the ruling be narrow and the docket be light."

Do you think the Roberts Court's "Citizen Uniteed" ruling was narrow?

"let the ruling be narrow and the docket be light."

man this advice has always failed me

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-considers-main-constitutional-question-in-health-care-law/2012/03/26/gIQAkyKWdS_story_1.html

Analysis of today's hearing on the mandate suggests what we already know--it's up to Kennedy. Scalia behaves as expected.

Toobin in a panic

This law looks like it's going to be struck down. I'm telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong," Toobin just said on CNN.

Toobin added that that the Obama administration's lawyer, U.S. Solicitor General David Verrelli, was unprepared for the attacks against the individual mandate.

"I don't know why he had a bad day," he said. "He is a good lawyer, he was a perfectly fine lawyer in the really sort of tangential argument yesterday. He was not ready for the answers for the conservative justices."

Roberts substitutes cellphones for broccoli regarding question of what the government can force you to buy

NY Times blog:

Based on the tough questions asked by several of the court's conservative justices and Justice William Kennedy, a key swing vote, about the individual mandate, opponents to the health care law sounded optimistic about the law's fate after Tuesday morning's hearing.

I don't know what the hell Toobin's so pissy about. Kennedy and Roberts were always the swing votes, with Nino a long shot.

Roberts does not buy this theory it seems:

The government counters that because virtually everyone will need health care, a person who chooses to forgo insurance is engaged in economic activity: They are effectively making an economic decision about how they will pay for their eventual health care — either by paying for it out of pocket, or by passing the costs on to hospitals, governments and, ultimately, other patients.

x-post--Toobin is pissy because he thought one of the conservative justices would lean the other way; and based on their questions, none of them did

I think Roberts likes the appearance of narrowness even if the ruling is substantially more

This law looks like it's going to be struck down. I'm telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong," Toobin just said on CNN.

Toobin added that that the Obama administration's lawyer, U.S. Solicitor General David Verrelli, was unprepared for the attacks against the individual mandate.

"I don't know why he had a bad day," he said. "He is a good lawyer, he was a perfectly fine lawyer in the really sort of tangential argument yesterday. He was not ready for the answers for the conservative justices."

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 1:05 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I predicted from the moment they granted cert that the law would be struck down. It's the perfect opportunity for the conservative justices to slam down their boots against Obama and the *overexpansion of gumbint power* or whatever. If the language of the Constitution were clear one way or the other, the Conservative justices might have some imperative to go whichever way that was. Since imo the language of the Constitution gives pretty much no direction on this one, the conservatives will feel free to impose whatever interpretation suits their beliefs.

Toobin and other commentators engaging in wishful thinking imo. I hope to be proven wrong.

From WSJ:

Justice Alito was the most openly skeptical about the idea that the mandate would stop cost-shifting, wondering if in fact it forces young healthy people "to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else."

In the second half of the session, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy asked some questions that suggested a level of sympathy with the Obama administration's defense, while justices Scalia and Alito said hardly anything that could be interpreted as favorable to the government.

Justice Kennedy wavered over the assertion that in health care, a bright line could be drawn between those engaged in commerce and those staying wholly outside the market.

A large crowd of people protesting, and supporting, the health care overhaul descended Monday on the Supreme Court, which is deciding whether the law is constitutional. WSJ's Neil Hickey reports the people had a variety of reasons for being there.

"Most questions in life are matters of degree," Justice Kennedy said. The younger, healthier Americans the law seeks to drive into the risk pool are "uniquely proximate" to affecting insurance rates, he said.

The law's challengers, including a group of 26 Republican-led states, view the insurance requirement as an unprecedented intrusion on individual liberty. They say Congress can't use its interstate-commerce powers to regulate citizens who choose not to participate in the health-insurance market.

whoops – ignore the "A large crowd" caption

U.S. Solicitor General David Verrelli, was unprepared for the attacks against the individual mandate

if true, how is this possible?

aaaaand we have audio: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-398-Tuesday

x-post- Maybe this is analyst Toobin sounding frustrated, or maybe in all of the preparation Verelli did for the case he somehow was not ready for the type of questions he got. But it's unlikely any answers that Verelli gave would win over Alito or Scalia.

The Scotus blog focus:

http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/03/the-argument-is-done/

Towards the end of the argument the most important question was Justice Kennedy’s. After pressing the government with great questions Kennedy raised the possibility that the plaintiffs were right that the mandate was a unique effort to force people into commerce to subsidize health insurance but the insurance market may be unique enough to justify that unusual treatment. But he didn’t overtly embrace that. It will be close. Very close.

Doesn't it seem a bit ridiculous, when you step back from this issue a bit, that whether or not we can have a workable healthcare system in this country depends on competing semantic arguments?

If they strike down the ACA, they would be torching about 70 years worth of well-established precedent that is the foundation of a HUGE amount of settled law. If this happens, then how the opinion is reasoned and how the boundaries conditions are tested is going to be massively important to future jurisprudence at the federal level.

With Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas in place, this sort of radical, Samson-pulls-the-temple-down act is exactly what this court was constructed for. I sure as shit hope Kennedy doesn't fall for this.

If they strike down the ACA, they would be torching about 70 years worth of well-established precedent that is the foundation of a HUGE amount of settled law. If this happens, then how the opinion is reasoned and how the boundaries conditions are tested is going to be massively important to future jurisprudence at the federal level.

It seems very unlikely that they'll strike down the entire act, let alone in a way that will overturn 70 years worth of precedent. There are plenty of ways they can rule against 'Obamacare' that don't involve that kind of torching.

individual mandate always seemed like a horrible way to get the legislation through, esp if the penalty assessed for non-compliance were not treated as paid enrollment in some kind of government-sponsored basic healthcare plan. america requires a comprehensive public health insurance/healthcare system, and while i would be terribly saddened to see this legislation struck down, i understand that it was shaky constitutional ground from the beginning.

and hurting OTM about how surgically precise the eventual ruling is likely to be, if they do reject the law

the words' "health care mandate" do not actually appear in the law.

Doesn't it seem a bit ridiculous, when you step back from this issue a bit, that whether or not we can have a workable healthcare system in this country depends on competing semantic arguments?

semantic arguments have very little to do w/ it, it depends on political appointments and how one particular political appointment is feeling

JUSTICE ALITO: Do you think there is a, a
market for burial services?

GENERAL VERRILLI: For burial services?

JUSTICE ALITO: Yes.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Yes, Justice Alito, I
think there is.

JUSTICE ALITO: All right, suppose that you
and I walked around downtown Washington at lunch hour
and we found a couple of healthy young people and we
stopped them and we said, "You know what you're doing?
You are financing your burial services right now because
eventually you're going to die, and somebody is going to
have to pay for it, and if you don't have burial
insurance and you haven't saved money for it, you're
going to shift the cost to somebody else."
Isn't that a very artificial way of talking
about what somebody is doing?

GENERAL VERRILLI: No, that -­

JUSTICE ALITO: And if that's true, why
isn't it equally artificial to say that somebody who is
doing absolutely nothing about health care is financing
health care services?

GENERAL VERRILLI: It's, I think it's
completely different. The -- and the reason is that
the, the burial example is not -- the difference is here
we are regulating the method by which you are paying for
something else -- health care -- and the insurance
requirement -- I think the key thing here is my friends
on the other side acknowledge that it is within the
authority of Congress under Article I under the commerce
power to impose guaranteed-issue and community rating
forms, to end -- to impose a minimum coverage provision.
Their argument is just that it has to occur at the point
of sale

rough

yikes

fuck, that's damning. i know that's just an extract of a much longer/larger debate, but it makes it sound as though verrilli has no idea to defend the most basic elements of the case he's trying to defend.

defend/defend

for one thing, basic burial services tend to be fixed

I mean, the price of basic burial services

sometimes justices ask hypotheticals to get counsel to focus on essentials; sometimes they ask questions that they genuinely think has something to do with the matter at hand; sometimes they're assholes.

think this is the latter

burial services also a quarter of the US GDP or whatever healthcare is now

also NOT argh

if the court strikes down the individual mandate, regardless of how narrow/surgical/precise it is, it will be used as precedent for future challenges to other federal programs

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Could you help -- help me
with this. Assume for the moment -- you may disagree.
Assume for the moment that this is unprecedented, this
is a step beyond what our cases have allowed, the
affirmative duty to act to go into commerce. If that is
so, do you not have a heavy burden of justification?
I understand that we must presume laws are
constitutional, but, even so, when you are changing the
relation of the individual to the government in this,
what we can stipulate is, I think, a unique way, do you
not have a heavy burden of justification to show
authorization under the Constitution?

GENERAL VERRILLI: So two things about that,
Justice Kennedy. First, we think this is regulation of
people's participation in the health care market, and
all -- all this minimum coverage provision does is say
that, instead of requiring insurance at the point of
sale, that Congress has the authority under the commerce
power and the necessary proper power to ensure that
people have insurance in advance of the point of sale
because of the unique nature of this market, because
this is a market in which -- in which you -- although
most of the population is in the market most of the
time -- 83 percent visit a physician every year; 96
percent over a five-year period -- so virtually
everybody in society is in this market, and you've got
to pay for the health care you get, the predominant way
in which it's -- in which it's paid for is insurance,
and -- and the Respondents agree that Congress could
require that you have insurance in order to get health
care or forbid health care from being provided -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: Why do you -- why do you
define the market that broadly?

UGH. Nino actually used the broccoli theory.

I wonder how roberts feels about his legacy as presider over the 'roberts court' - have heard that he was a bit shaken over how widely reviled citizens united is, maybe he's a little bit invested in protecting his legacy? idk

Ginsberg to the rescue:

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Mr. Verrilli, I thought
that your main point is that, unlike food or any other
market, when you made the choice not to buy insurance,
even though you have every intent in the world to
self-insure, to save for it, when disaster strikes, you
may not have the money. And the tangible result of it
is -- we were told there was one brief that Maryland
Hospital Care bills 7 percent more because of these
uncompensated costs, that families pay a thousand
dollars more than they would if there were no
uncompensated costs. I thought what was unique about this is it's
not my choice whether I want to buy a product to keep me
healthy, but the cost that I am forcing on other people
if I don't buy the product sooner rather than later.

yeah for one thing if you postpone burial service preparations, the cost of your eventual burial will go DOWN not up.

JUSTICE BREYER: All right. So if that is
your difference -- if that is your difference, I'm
somewhat uncertain about your answers to -- for example,
Justice Kennedy asked, can you, under the Commerce
Clause, Congress create commerce where previously none
existed. Well, yeah, I thought the answer to that
was, since McCulloch versus Maryland, when the Court
said Congress could create the Bank of the United States
which did not previously exist, which job was to create
commerce that did not previously exist, since that time
the answer has been, yes. I would have thought that
your answer -- can the government, in fact, require you
to buy cell phones or buy burials that, if we propose
comparable situations, if we have, for example, a
uniform United States system of paying for every burial
such as Medicare Burial, Medicaid Burial, CHIP Burial,
ERISA Burial and Emergency Burial beside the side of the
road, and Congress wanted to rationalize that system,
wouldn't the answer be, yes, of course, they could.

like, you'll just be buried/cremated/thrown in a ditch in the cheapest manner possible

xp

yeah for one thing if you postpone burial service preparations, the cost of your eventual burial will go DOWN not up.

but there'll be an awful stink in the room

None of this is going to hinge on any of the arguments made in the court so all the hand-wringing about how shitty the SG's performance is are just lame. Jeff Toobin should know better frankly.

re verilli's first bungled response posted slightly upthread: there's no pressing need for legislation to deal with the cost of funeral insurance and the consequences of non-insurance on the millions of americans who can't afford it. so the question is irrelevant. there IS, however, a pressing need for such legislation when it comes to health insurance, and the legislation is constitutionally justified by significant precedent relating to interpretation of the commerce clause. that's the damn answer.

yeah, okay, fair point alex

anyway, from what I understand, the court would have to do a lot more work to strike down this bill than to uphold it.. so here's for institutional inertia

v excitable on intrade

http://i.minus.com/ibyLaLmfaqtZNM.png

the commerce clause is just, like, so awesome.

re the Roberts legacy speculation:

I think based on his insular private school education when he was younger and being a top student at Harvard both undergrad and law school, plus more importantly than that, his rulings so far, Roberts is more invested in arrogantly knowing that he's correct, and he thinks that his legacy will eventually reflect that, even if the liberal media and some protestors don't like his decisions. While he is more concerned about appearances than Thomas or Scalia, he seems to largely reach the same bottom line decision

the fact that the supreme court isnt broadcast on tv is one of the biggest bummers, h8 the supreme court what assholes

this is a good piece btw http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/03/the_supreme_court_is_more_concerned_with_the_politics_of_the_health_care_debate_than_the_law_.single.html

The Court has always been concerned with the politics of the decisions that directly affect the vast majority of citizens. This case is no different.

How is Lithwick not a staff writer at the New Yorker?

wtf with burial question, part of the reason there is interstate commerce occuring is because the other side of the transaction is already federally regulated- and that very regulation creates the free-rider problem wrt to emergency services for those who are not covered. is there a similar situaton with burial?
xpost

SCOTUSBLOG tweeted earlier:

Paul Clement gave the best argument I've ever heard. No real hard questions from the right. Mandate is in trouble.

lithwick otm

I always have liked most of what Lithwick has written, but I do not think she makes a strong argument for this statement:

Because, as it happens, the current court is almost fanatically worried about its legitimacy and declining public confidence in the institution.

Roberts gives a superficial amount of attention to these issues but the hearings are still not televised, there is no ethics code for Supreme Court justices and Citizens United and other cases show a lack of interest in stare decisis.

JUSTICE BREYER: All right. So if that is
your difference -- if that is your difference, I'm
somewhat uncertain about your answers to -- for example,
Justice Kennedy asked, can you, under the Commerce
Clause, Congress create commerce where previously none
existed. Well, yeah, I thought the answer to that
was, since McCulloch versus Maryland, when the Court
said Congress could create the Bank of the United States
which did not previously exist, which job was to create
commerce that did not previously exist, since that time
the answer has been, yes. I would have thought that
your answer -- can the government, in fact, require you
to buy cell phones or buy burials that, if we propose
comparable situations, if we have, for example, a
uniform United States system of paying for every burial
such as Medicare Burial, Medicaid Burial, CHIP Burial,
ERISA Burial and Emergency Burial beside the side of the
road, and Congress wanted to rationalize that system,
wouldn't the answer be, yes, of course, they could.

^^^

declining public confidence in the institution current sitting justices

We must assume that these statements flying around for weeks about Roberts' "obsession with prestige" come from Bloody Mary Sundays at Cokie's. I have literally read nothing in the last few months adducing the degree to which this decision affects the court's "institutional prestige."

Lithwick seems to have bought Roberts spin on it (rather than Cokie not related Roberts spin on Justice Roberts):

Roberts even nodded at that court-wide anxiety by devoting most of his 2011 State of the Judiciary report to issues of recusal and judicial integrity, and by reversing his own policy on same-day audio release, in order to allow the American public to listen in on the health care cases next week (albeit on a two-hour delay).

This is mostly just lipservice though since Robert did not suggest an openness to changing recusal practices or allowing tv. And it's a big jump to go from this stuff, to Robert is gonna support a mandate on health insurance

Lithwick also blames the Obama White House for not defending health care after it was passed, as playing a role in getting this issue to the Supreme Court. But if Obama had used his bully pulpit more and Dems stood up that summer when tea partiers were first carrying on about death panels, wouldn't this just be more like abortion--2 set views, neither of which will change. Opponents of health care would have challenged this no matter what imho.

The thing is, yes, every SCOTUS decision is going to be to some degree based on politics, but this one is particularly ripe for political-based rulings because there's so little help one way or the other in the actual text of the Constitution, or, really, in past decisions. And that's why I say it DOES come down to a semantic argument, albeit one fueled by politics.

What I mean is that if Congress passes a law that is absolutely loathed by conservatives but is CLEARLY within congressional power in the Constitution, even the most conservative justice will have a much harder time striking it down.

It's possible her take on Roberts has been distilled from his general demeanor in interviews and public appearances. As opposed to Scalia or Thomas, who are basically unabashed assholes, Roberts at least humors decorum.

if Congress passes a law that is absolutely loathed by conservatives but is CLEARLY within congressional power in the Constitution, even the most conservative justice will have a much harder time striking it down.

idk all the experts seem to agree this p much describes the situation

What is "clearly within congressional power in the Constitution" is a matter of opinion!

and that's what originalists don't want to accept and English majors know: interpreting law is interpreting literature.

the most obvious: a person can go her whole life without participating in the broccoli market. a person can never, ever, ever go her whole life without participating in the healthcare market.

if you go your whole life without participating in the broccoli market you are def participating in the healthcare market

idk all the experts seem to agree this p much describes the situation

strongly disagree. this law is clearly blazing new territory, a point made several times in the questioning excerpts posted above. if i didn't agree very strongly that "something needs to be done" about the cost of healtcare/health insurance in america, and if i wasn't a die-hard political supporter of the democratic party, i'd probably agree that it should be struck down.

i was talking abt what experts think

uh have you read stuff that wasn't the questioning excerpts posted above

The only experts we should pay attention to are the ones we agree with.

theres a reason why 85% of experts polled think the law will stand despite the courts strong conservative bias and tendency to behave politically

Toobin: the 1% of experts.

well it would be interesting to have them repolled now, since he was in the 85% at the outset

Did these experts expect the Court to rule definitively about the entire law?

its was specifically re the individual mandate

whoah dandy don! where ya been

all of the "expert" opinions I've read are sort of stretched reasoning by analogy one way or the other. I really don't think there's any part of "...to regulate commerce...among the several states" that makes it clear that Congress can or can't require people to buy health insurance. It's a blank slate as far as I'm concerned. I mean if you were to go by the *original intent* (drudge sirens) of the *founding fathers*, Congress couldn't do 90% of what it does under the commerce clause as it is, b/c the point of the commerce clause was to prevent interstate trade problems, not to engender national regulation of all commercial activity. So at this point it's just a question of whether the court decides the reasoning of post-FDR commerce clause jurisprudence should be taken yet another little step further or not, and I think that decision is pretty arbitrary without politics coming into it.

if you were a conservative justice concerned abt political optics preparing oneself to uphold the individual mandate youd prob want to look tough and skeptical during the oral arguments so as to project that you pondered the whole thing v seriously

The only experts we should pay attention to are the ones we agree with.

― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, March 27, 2012

"We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is" – Charles Evans Hughes

whether the court decides the reasoning of post-FDR commerce clause jurisprudence should be taken yet another little step further or not, and I think that decision is pretty arbitrary without politics coming into it.

there's not a way for politics to not come into it, even if we were pretending that they were good little legal philosophers and not political actors

My legal theory, btw, is that conservatives are really appealing to the Constitution's implied "you can't make me do stuff" clause, but they don't want to admit it.

i was talking abt what experts think

― lag∞n, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 11:50 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uh have you read stuff that wasn't the questioning excerpts posted above

― iatee, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 11:50 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"experts" aren't unitary, and aren't the easiest group to define for polling purposes

yes, i've read stuff beyond the questioning

the simple fact that the individual mandate federally compels all american citizens to participate in a market in a certain way makes that part of the legislation constitutionally novel - note that i'm not saying anything about whether or not it will be overturned

Sotomayor's explanation of how insurance provides care (instead of conflating the two, as we and the media have often done) was lucid.

whoah dandy don! where ya been

Working too much, family, etc. Also, waiting anxiously for threads like this to arrive and wishing Gabbneb would come join the fun or something.

gabbneb's been permabanned

He's on the short list of Obama's high court nominees though.

gabbneb's been permabanned

seriously?

my god Roberts and Alito arguing with Verrilli about the efficacy of offering substance abuse riders, maternity, etc and Stuff Lots of People Won't Use.

is Nino this out of touch?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, that was the point
I was trying to make, Justice Kagan, that you're young
and healthy one day, but you don't stay that way, and
the system works over time. And so, I just don't think
it's a fair characterization of it. And it does get
back to, I think, a problem I think is important to
understand -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: These people are not stupid. They're going to buy insurance later. They're young and
need the money now.

GENERAL VERRILLI: But that's -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: When they think they have a
substantial risk of incurring high medical bills,
they'll buy insurance, like the rest of us.

GENERAL VERRILLI: But that's -- that's -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: I don't know why you think
that they're never going to buy it.

GENERAL VERRILLI: That's the problem,
Justice Scalia. That's -- and that's exactly the
experience that the States had that made the imposition
of guaranteed issue and community rating not only be
ineffectual but be highly counterproductive.

seriously?

yeah I forget why. it was awhile ago.

xp

Can't we just end this whole charade and give everyone Medicaid/Medicare who wants it?

the problem is people only want it when they're sick

dandy don otm

Ten or whatever years ago, this would have actually bothered me.

Now I just don't give a fuck anymore.

I've listened to three quarters of this thing, and I can't understand Toobin's hysterics. Verrilli did fine. Roberts, to my surprise, agreed with him on a number of points and sounds like he's ready to affirm at least a part of the law; what concerns him, as he also pointed out several times, is the federal government's control over the method of payment.

It would be a shock if most of the law wasn't affirmed.

when you look at how heavy the media scrutiny is of this case its inevitable that some of them are gonna think they see some crucial piece of info and freak out over it

x-post-

Not really.

if it's struck down, Obama will def get a landslide in November

if its struck down, im not saying that someone should assassinate a justice or two

or yknow 5

TPM otm;

The snap reactions to today’s Supreme Court arguments about the constitutionality of the health care law’s individual mandate gave reform supporters a collective case of heartburn. The conservative justices seemed broadly hostile to the law’s requirement that everyone carry health insurance. President Obama’s Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, was widely panned by experienced court watchers for stumbling at key moments. Jeffery Toobin — a seasoned vet of the high court — called it a “train wreck” for the Obama administration.

Here’s some antacid.

Over the first two days of arguments, two of the Court’s five conservative justices have expressed sympathy for key parts of the administration’s arguments. And the administration probably only needs one of their votes to fully uphold the law.

That’s the view of former acting Clinton Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, who sat down with me and a handful of other reporters after watching the arguments. Dellinger tamped down on some initial criticism’s of his successor’s performance before the court. And, crucially, he highlighted an exchange that occurred on Monday — one we broke down here — in which Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to reject the cornerstone of the challenger’s argument.

“Yesterday the Chief Justice said that it doesn’t make much sense to say that the mandate is separate from the penalty or the tax,” Dellinger said. “He seemed yesterday to have accepted the government’s argument that there’s a real choice here. If you don’t want to have health insurance that you can pay the tax penalty.”

i personally dont believe in assasinating supreme court justices, but if i did and if i had high level sniping skills

If you don’t want to have health insurance that you can pay the tax penalty.”

I need to make a poster from this phrase.

Only I think it will say,

"If you don't want to have _____________________ " then you can pay the tax penalty.

an abortion

tacos

long-form TV dramas

And also,

"If you want to have ________________________ then you can pay the tax penalty"

oh wait, I just advocated a lot of excise taxes and they aren't regressive. There I go again.

*progressive*

I'm going to be hurt by the ACA: I use lower premium catastrophic insurance, ie insurance as it was known before the 1980s when it became low-copay comprehensive coverage. I was somewhat dubious about the mandate's constitutionality, but hopefully an adverse SC outcome will make single-payer or Medicare buy-in the necessary priority (as its been for progressive Dems for decades).

The ACA with the individual mandate struck down would be a disaster for the private health insurers. The big ones (UNH, AET, HUM, WLP, CI) were all down 1.5-2% by noon, but have largely recovered by the close. This suggests the equity market digested the hearings and thinks the likelihood of an adverse SC ruling hasn't changed much.

Can't imagine the ACA surviving in any meaningful form without the mandate.

The ACA with the individual mandate struck down would be a disaster for the private health insurers. The big ones (UNH, AET, HUM, WLP, CI) were all down 1.5-2% by noon, but have largely recovered by the close. This suggests the equity market digested the hearings and thinks the likelihood of an adverse SC ruling hasn't changed much.

― I favor steatopygous buttocks and I do not dissimulate. (Sanpaku), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 4:11 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it probably suggests nothing

stock market can't read kennedy's mind any better than anyone here

guys I can read Kennedy's mind

lithwick thinks today was political theater more so even than usual http://www.slate.com/articles/video/slate_v/2012/03/obamacare_individual_mandate_faces_hard_questions_at_the_supreme_court_.html

The size of Kennedy's brain:

http://supremecourt.c-span.org/images/Kennedy_flt.jpg

I just read this on The Volokh Conspiracy's comments section. Thoughts?

What they should have done was tax people for health care, then give refunds to people who buy insurance

Yes, that's the frustrating thing about this - had the Congress passed a 2% increase in the income tax and at the same time granted a credit in that amount for having health insurance, the results would be identical in practice and there would be no constitutional argument.

I'm not sure that it's too late though - if the mandate is struck down but deemed severable, something will have to give.

We would still have the constitutional argument, methinks.

will be interesting to see what happens if the individual mandate is thrown out and obama is reelected

for the current individual mandate, to whom does the penalty money go to?

We would still have the constitutional argument, methinks.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 4:27 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can think that

course saying "all Congress had to do was pass a 2% income tax increase and at the same time create a health care tax credit" is a little like saying "all the llama had to do was ride a unicycle and at the same time juggle knives"

will be interesting to see what happens if the individual mandate is thrown out and obama is reelected

― lag∞n, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 4:28 PM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think prob nothing would really happen legislatively during obamas 2nd term due to gridlock and by the time you get to the next president youd have serious cost issues to deal with but obamacare will be too entrenched to just throw out

only solution: medicare for all!!

The highlight for me:

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: But you're -- but the
given is that virtually everyone, absent some
intervention from above, meaning that someone's life
will be cut short in a fatal way, virtually everyone
will use health care.

MR. CLEMENT: At some point, that's right,
but all sorts of people will not, say, use health care
in the next year, which is the relevant period for the
insurance.

JUSTICE BREYER: But do you think you can,
better than the actuaries or better than the members of
Congress who worked on it, look at the 40 million people
who are not insured and say which ones next year will or
will not use, say, emergency care?
Can you do that any better than if we knew
that 40 million people were suffering, about to suffer a
contagious disease, and only 10 million would get
sick -­

MR. CLEMENT: Of course not -­

JUSTICE BREYER: -- and we don't know which?

MR. CLEMENT: Of course not, Justice Breyer,
but the point is that once Congress decides it's going
to regulate extant commerce, it is going to get all
sorts of latitude to make the right judgments about
actuarial predictions, which actuarial to rely on, which
one not to rely on.

The question that's a proper question for
this Court, though, is whether or not, for the first
time ever in our history, Congress also has the power to
compel people into commerce, because, it turns out, that
would be a very efficient things for purposes of
Congress's optimal regulation of that market.

Breyer's singsong intonations are straight out of the sonorous tenured college professor playbook and it's quite annoying.

Congress's optimal regulation of that market

Wow.

Whatever's left of me just died reading that.

"optimal"

As if "optimal" was void of political whim.

p sure he was being slightly ironical

"Yesterday the Chief Justice said that it doesn’t make much sense to say that the mandate is separate from the penalty or the tax," Dellinger said. "He seemed yesterday to have accepted the government’s argument that there’s a real choice here. If you don’t want to have health insurance that you can pay the tax penalty."

I hope this is right. I think the key here is seeing it as a tax - because Congress has broad Constitutional powers to tax.

And we should never limit those.

Well, you can limit them if you want, but it would take a Constitutional amendment.

don aren't you like a libertarian or something

What I mean is limit the scope of taxation Nate, which is what you could argue the SCOTUS would do here.

I'd rather us expand Medicare/Medicaid than expand the scope of taxation.

How is it expanding the scope of taxation? The existing scope is very broad:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause

Currently the federal government cannot tax people for not having health insurance, right?

That's the issue being decided. Based on my admittedly non-expert reading of the clause, I'd say they do have that power.

I mean there's nothing in there about what you can and can't tax, as long as the taxes are applied uniformly to the States.

which is why most of yesterday's argument revolved around "penalty" vs "tax."

Am I missing something then?

If SCOTUS agrees with the feds on this, expansion of taxing power will be validated.

Or maybe more succinctly, it will be ratified?

which is why most of yesterday's argument revolved around "penalty" vs "tax."

I don't really think the decision should rest on semantics though. Unless they can show there is a substantive difference between a penalty and a tax, I think the Court should uphold the law.

If SCOTUS agrees with the feds on this, expansion of taxing power will be validated

I think you're saying the Feds didn't have the power, because they didn't use it. I'm saying they had the power, but they didn't use it until now. I guess it's a matter of perspective. So I guess in your view, any qualitatively new type of tax would be unconstitutional?

The Obama administration isnt making that argument though; it's resting it in part on an interpretation of the Commerce Clause consistent with post-1937 (hell, McCullough vs Maryland) rulings.

xpost to dan

Yes, that's the impression I've been getting to. I admit to being a bit puzzled by that approach, but then again I'm not a Constitutional scholar.

"too" not "to"

everyone's fave site the National Review just sent out some anti-abortion spam with oddly timed SCotUS bashing -

Dear Friend,

For 39 years, nine unelected men and women on the Supreme Court have played God with innocent human life.

They have invented laws that condemned to painful deaths without trial more than 56 million babies for the crime of being "inconvenient."

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling forced abortion-on-demand down our nation's throat.

SCOTUS deep-throated the nation?

"painful deaths without trial" oh god the unpacking to be done

I'm not trying to make a constitutional argument here, so I probably screwed that up. The issue isn't whether or not the government can tax, it's the expansion of the tax system that riles me, I suppose.

Funny, I would imagine that many conservatives think that there is no difference between a penalty and a tax, unless it's a situation like this one.

xpost

i really don't get the 'mandate is unconstitutional' argument, unless you also think that social security and medicare are unconstitutional.

neither contains any obligation to participate in a public market in a specific way

social security is not something you purchase

if we had a single-payer system, none of this would be in question

something else would probably be in question, but that's a given...

Here, don

Am I missing something then?

If SCOTUS agrees with the feds on this, expansion of taxing power will be validated.

― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 5:32 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

laws are presumed constitutional until found otherwise. congress has the power to tax in this manner, because it went and did that. two years later we're finding out whether it was constitutional

Social Security is also structured as a tax and the constitution authorizes congress to impose taxes.

SCOTUSblog's summary:

That argument, indeed, was the one that the conservative members of the Court repeatedly pressed while the Solicitor General was offering his defense. The fear of this Orwellian prospect led Justice after Justice to ask for some constitutional principle that would limit the expected damage to the Republic. Verrilli’s main response was the uniqueness of the health insurance industry, but that did not deter the continued complaint from the bench that Congress would not stop there if it had the endorsement for this initial foray into Super Government.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer was the most vigorous defender of Congress’s power to select the mandate as the key piece in the new health care law’s regulation of the insurance industry, but almost equally in its favor were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. But those four, of course, cannot control the outcome on their own. But, in the end, if Kennedy were to wind up accepting the mandate’s validity — however reluctantly — those four could then be in the majority. Such a majority, it appeared, would probably form only behind the theory that the mandate was within Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause, not under its taxing authority in the General Welfare Clause. The tax argument seemed to lack force, and, anyway, Verrilli used it primarily as just a backup.

If that coalition were to form, it would be likely that Justice Kennedy, the senior among those five, almost certainly would assign the opinion to himself — unless, of course, the Chief Justice ultimately were persuaded to go along so that this historic case did not turn out to be decided by a possibly embarrassing 5-4 vote. Roberts was among the more combative adversaries of the mandate, during Verrilli’s argument, but he made considerable efforts to remind the challengers’ lawyers of the government’s key points, perhaps to test how solid their answers to those points would be. His vote in favor of the mandate did seem like a long shot, unless he found institutional imperatives for going along if a majority were to uphold it.

If a majority vote to uphold the law and Kennedy assigns himself the opinion, its core will rest on something he said today:

“I think it is true that, if most questions in life are matters of degree,” it could be that in the markets for health insurance and for the health care for which insurance was the method of payment “the young person who is uninsured is uniquely proximately very close to affecting the rates of insurance and the costs of providing medical care in a way that is not true in other industries. That’s my concern in the case.”

It's amusing to me how so many Supreme Court discussions generally treat Thomas as if he doesn't exist. Like his vote in every case is so clearly known, as is the unlikelihood of him contributing anything to the debate. Which is accurate, but still amusing.

he is truly an umpire

chumpire

Slobbo just sits there doing crossword puzzles

why do you call him slobbo, alfred?

he literally doesn't contribute to the debate. I think Thomas has spoken up during oral argument once in his career.

xp have you seen the guy?

On one hand I admire a fellow who admits to his limitations and is confident of his strengths; but having read Jane Mayer's booklength bio, his disgraceful responses to an interview about good opinion writing, and a chunk of his insufferable memoir I made a few conclusions last year, I wonder about his shall we say conflict about how and why he's on the court.

Let me be fair and quote an admissible response:

BAG: So why is it that you don’t ask questions at oral argument?

CT: Too many.

BAG: If it were much lighter and you didn’t feel as if you were
adding to the cacophony of voices, you might?

CT: Oh, yeah.

BAG: You might ask more questions?

CT: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it wouldn’t be rude. I think it’s just
too much. And I don’t normally ask a lot of questions, but
it’s much easier to move into traffic when people aren’t
bumper-to-bumper at 60 miles an hour. And I think that
that’s where we are now, and I much preferred it the way it
was when I got here. I think that oral argument should be a
conversation. There are nine members of the Court, and
they should talk to the person out there. That person isn’t
your enemy, that person is not a combatant, that person is
not a bad person. The person is participating in an important
decision-making process. I think they should be treated
that way, with respect and the dignity that we expect. I don’t
like the back-and-forth, and I’ve been very clear about that,
and I won’t participate. I had about 40 arguments when I
started out as a young lawyer, and I was never treated this
way. If I had, I would’ve probably had a stroke. I mean, I
was so petrified.

BAG: How often does your mind change during an oral argument?

CT: Almost never. You can go whole terms without it ever
changing. That’s my point. And I’m almost certain that my
colleagues’ minds don’t change in maybe max 10 percent, 5
percent of the cases. Or it does change in 5 or 10 percent of
the cases, maybe, and I’m being generous there. And if that’s
the case, then why are the arguments so intense? And there’s
got to be some arguments where the questioning is not
intense. I think it would make for a better argument. I think
it would be better for the people who come up here to be
able to say they got their points. I think that’s very important.
There have been any number of 9–0, 7–2, 8–1 — when
you have votes like that, doesn’t it suggest to you that that
wasn’t a very hard case? And on the courts of appeals, there
are many cases where there is no oral argument. So if you
go with me for a minute, let’s just say half the cases are fairly
easy, let’s say a third; then that would suggest that a third of
the arguments should not be intense questioning — there
shouldn’t be intense questioning — that it should not be an
ordeal but rather an experience for the lawyer that it’s a participation
in a very, very important process. And I would
like it to go back to that. And why you see me not participate
is, again, normally I don’t ask questions. I didn’t ask
any questions in high school, college, or law school.

That is some dumb irresponsible bullshit. Maybe he should step down if he thinks DOING HIS JOB would be a bad thing.

I don’t ask questions. I didn’t ask any questions in high school, college, or law school.

incredible.

that's the part which made me gape

honestly I don't take issue with the rest of what's excerpted, other than that part

a lot of the rest of that interview sounds totally likable and normal but that last point ugh.

xpost

yes

hard to imagine sitting through law school and not asking a single question wtf

In my link he makes a number of workaday observations about the importance of editing whose utility and lack of pretension is refreshing, neither of which I can appreciate because his jurisprudence is so facile. It's not in the Constitution? No? Next!

eh, he's right - at the supreme court level, oral arguments don't really matter...but to outside observers they present the only analyzable 'in' to have into the black box process of how a case is decided

also, for the google search "clarence thomas slobbo" Alfred + ILX is at the top of the list

thanks!

you've finally made it

http://rootsaction.org/storage/clarence-thomas.jpg

he has very malleable skin

is it just me btw or does clarence thomas seem like a serious depressive? i'm not talking about that particularly photo, just his whole demeanor/ethos/personality.

he must've been deeply scarred by law school Socratic questions (which, TBF, can be a tedious game of "hide the ball" in the hands of the wrong people [i.e., many law-school professors])

thomas can't have a happy home life either.

someone take that "cheer up keanu" image and turn it into "cheer up clarence thomas" image thanks

If you've got a couple of hours read his memoir. Raised by a brutal, inexorable, loving grandfather, not learning proper English until adolescence, coming of age at the cusp of a civil rights movement about which he was at best ambivalent, Thomas would be fascinating if he could write better about it.

(I don't expect his jurisprudence to "reflect" this upbringing though)

Reading Jane Mayer’s excellent The Selling of Clarence Thomas a few years ago, I was amazed by the tortured ambivalence with which he regarded his education and job in the Reagan administration: Yale and the EEOC only accepted him because he was black, therefore, he reasons, there’s something wrong with those institutions, with me, or both. Contemptuous of affirmative action because it will not allow black men and women to rise on their merits, he can’t live with the probability that his own extraordinary rise resulted from tokenism, as of course it did, and so what? Thomas Sowell aside, how many black conservatives did National Review endorse?

That is some dumb irresponsible bullshit. Maybe he should step down if he thinks DOING HIS JOB would be a bad thing.

― neutral sequence for flute (blank), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 00:16 (48 minutes ago) Permalink

I don't agree with this. Supreme Court cases are heavily briefed. Each side makes every conceivable argument in print well before they're called in for oral argument, and there's nothing irresponsible about deciding on the briefs.

The tragic irony on which his career depends is being nominated as a SCOTUS by white patrons (John Danforth, George H.W. Bush) who encouraged him precisely because he was a black conservative and thus a commodity.

is it just me btw or does clarence thomas seem like a serious depressive? i'm not talking about that particularly photo, just his whole demeanor/ethos/personality.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 9:05 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya he displays a striking amount of inner conflict

it strikes me that he's the classic New Critic: decisions whose concentration on a golden past and dismissal of contemporaneity hide deep personal turmoil.

ya he doesnt like now because he experiences it as unbearably painful

Why are religious exemptions from the individual mandate allowed?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-do-todays-oral-arguments-matter/2012/03/27/gIQAb2dydS_blog.html

So what a waste of time, money and other resources if this thing gets struck down because of the mandate. Which, of course, was part of the compromise needed to get this thing passed in the first place, and even then, just barely, and even further then, with some serious backroom political machinations. Would we be here if there was single payer?

Of course we would be. This was going to the Supreme Court whichever direction the legislation took.

I don't agree. The mandate created a *hook* for certiorari. If it was just "medicare for all" I don't really see how this would be in the Supreme Court. The problem is that Congress never could have passed medicare for all.

So what a waste of time, money and other resources if this thing gets struck down because of the mandate.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 9:08 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in all likelihood it would just be the mandate that gets struck down while the rest of the act would stand

Which makes the entire thing untenable iirc

Yeah, minus the mandate it can't work. It sort of reaches the death by 1000 cuts stage, sort of like what the GOP has been up to with abortion. If we can't ban it, we'll just break it.

well its interesting because obamacare does v little to control costs, more always needed to be done on that front, this would just compound that, if obama gets reelected theres no way it gets repealed, so who knows what happens

its also interesting that obamacare minus the individual mandate looks v much like the healthcare reform platform obama ran on, recall hillarys plan had an individual mandate and he gave her a hard time abt it

But it can't pay for itself minus the mandate, can it?

Noah Millmanis worth a read.

sure it can insurance would just cost more for those for those who have it xp

of course itd be a golden age for the uninsured

you know who will be really mad if the individual mandate gets zapped, the insurance companies, which would be p beautiful

it would cost so much more than it would be untenable, which is why obama came around to mandates

It was just dumb, dumb, DUMB to focus on "the Swiss model", but so much more palatable to the insurance companies.

it would cost so much more than it would be untenable, which is why obama came around to mandates

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:42 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

obamacare was already untenable, it just means something would need to be done about costs sooner, i mean its not untenable as in the law just somehow collapses, its still a law, its still on the books, doing something abt how much our healthcare costs is something that congress is gonna need to get to either way

gaming the outcome via stats http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/study-on-oral-arguments-odds-may-be-in-white-houses-favor/2012/03/28/gIQAJK3VgS_blog.html

yeah i mean without the mandate it would be immediately untenable, like the instant preexisting conditions are banished. but i agree longterm it's untenable in present form anyway

i feel like untenable is kind of vague and not totally accurate here, it would just cost a lot, but if obamas reelected its not going away, therefor it is tenable

is this idea that the mandate being struck down + a reelection would make single payer more possible/likely realistic?

single payer is not going to happen under Obama

nothing significant will happen during Obama's second term.

why not? (not rhetorical)

xp but applies to both of you actually

Yeah, let's see some single payer.

Divided government. He will have no mandate. Besides, he's fighting history.

i agree that single player likely in the form of medicare for all is a ways away, its a huge move that most politicians just are not ready for, long term i think its prob in the cards

too much of a battle politically and Obama won't have majorities in both houses, nor does he have the will or the political capital to do it. Also trying to pass single-payer would be like admitting he didn't get it right the first time.

secondly, nothing happens in most Presidents second terms. They're lame ducks that can no longer help the electoral prospects of Congress, so congress has no incentive to advance any of his initiatives. Where he'll have the most free hand will be in foreign policy, and that's where any second term "achievements" will happen.

xp

...and, in spite of the conviction of 40% of White America to the contrary, he's a capitalist at heart.

single payer isn't gonna happen cause the senate exists

I mean it might happen in like 2040 or something

most significant thing to happen legislatively in Obama's 2nd term, potentially, will be a series of vetoes lol (depending on how congressional elections shake out)

xp

one interesting and under discussed provision of obamacare is that states can opt out if they put in place a system that covers as many people and costs less, of course the only thing that matches that description is single payer, vermonts already looking into it, once a few states do it it becomes a proof of concept for a national model, sneaky

I think there is a difference between obama won't do anything because '2nd term historical precedent' (I don't really think historical precedent matters that much and these kinda story narratives are weird) and because he's not gonna have a great congress to work with (this part is true)

please let's just get rid of states already

iatee - the latter begets the former

list of things to get rid of:
states
the senate
the supreme court
the presidency

otm

you forgot the electoral college

you forgot: the constitution

you forgot america

list of things to get rid of:
the u.s. government

we good

feel like we should just all move back to europe, give america back to the bison

Give America back to the Natives.

totes

At a later one-hour session on Wednesday, starting at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT), the justices will review whether Congress violated the Constitution by coercing the states to dramatically expand the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor, providing coverage for an estimated 17 million Americans.

Did the Justices sleep in this morning, or hear another case?

feel like we should just all move back to europe, give america back to the bison

― dayo, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 12:32 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we already gave him ilh

our dictator is a needy dictator

300m americans moving to europe would be an amazing sitcom

all 300m of us would hang out in a cafe in paris, that'd be the main set

thered be a frazzled french waitress throwing her arms up like 300 MILLION LATTES!

sacré bleu!

you guys, obama will have more flexibility after the election. there was an information transmittal that covered this a few days ago

Transcripts available!.

i will transmit this information to vladimir

*engages transmitter switch above earlobe*

i will transmit this information to vladimir

this is my new default response to any information that comes my way btw

feel like we should just all move back to europe, give america back to the bison

― dayo, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 12:32 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we already gave him ilh

― lag∞n, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:35 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sup *presidenting*

Hopefully he gets re-elected and then after his second term as President he can start looking for that political capital he's somehow always lacking.

historically ilx presidents are weak and ineffective in their second term

*makes threatening gesture at second-term presidente bison*

obamacare does v little to control costs, more always needed to be done on that front

Controlling costs would require less money flowing to drug companies, hospitals, insurance companies, doctors, and the entire medical-industrial complex from the economy at large. It is a law of nature that a well-designed parasite feeds off its host to the greatest degree it can, but never so much that the host is weakened to the point of death. That way the host can still go about its business of serving the parasite.

I mean it might happen in like 2040 or something

I can just imagine the GOP then pushing for vouchers

Paul Clement is a nimble, articulate litigator, no question.

Today's arguments were the most substantive, and even boasted a few digs: Kagan getting a laugh out of the audience's awareness that Scalia only cares about the text in front of him, Sotomayor reminding Scalia that yesterday he'd say 26-year-olds don't buy insurance after remarking today that 26-year-olds pay a disproportionate chunk of healthcare costs.

SCOTUSBlog:

The Supreme Court spent 91 minutes Wednesday operating on the assumption that it would strike down the key feature of the new health care law, but may have convinced itself in the end not to do that because of just how hard it would be to decide what to do after that. A common reaction, across the bench, was that the Justices themselves did not want the onerous task of going through the remainder of the entire 2,700 pages of the law and deciding what to keep and what to throw out, and most seemed to think that should be left to Congress. They could not come together, however, on just what task they would send across the street for the lawmakers to perform. The net effect may well have shored up support for the individual insurance mandate itself.

"There are so many things in the act," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including many provisions not directly related to market reforms such as Native American health care. "Why make Congress redo that? Why should we stop and start from scratch?"

Added Justice Elena Kagan. "Half a loaf is better than no loaf," meaning some provisions would survive.

And the court appeared in no mood to pick and choose.

"You want us to go through 2,700 pages" of the law, asked Justice Antonin Scalia. "Is this not totally unrealistic ... to go through one by one and decide each one?"

Justice Anthony Kennedy said he was reluctant to take on this "awesome exercise of judicial power," at the expense of congressional discretion.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/28/politics/scotus-health-care/index.html

But Scalia does know which things he does not like

http://deadhomersociety.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/trash-of-the-titans1.png?w=655

hundreds of thousands of lives may potentially be saved by laziness

sounds like my love life

lmao these lazy ass justices

this guy http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/03/28/does_antonin_scalia_know_what_s_in_the_affordable_care_law_.html

might be just that it's 5:00 but this thread got really lolly in the last page for me, kudos

all 300m of us would hang out in a cafe in paris, that'd be the main set
― iatee, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 12:46 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thered be a frazzled french waitress throwing her arms up like 300 MILLION LATTES!
― lag∞n, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 12:48 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sacré bleu!
― dayo, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 12:50 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so all the ilx leftists who complained that obamacare was just a giveaway to the insurance companies and worse than nothing at all: are ya'all getting psyched for the SCOTUS ruling?

ha

although i think some cognitive dissonance is inevitable and healthy.

i didn't ever say it was better than nothing at all and if i did i disagree with myself now. very psyched for june tho

Not many of us suggested I'd prefer no bill to this one. For my part the hearings have been edifying. I finally understand that health insurance and care are two different things. In this economy, you get healthcare through health insurance. That's why the broccoli analogy is all wet.

Vaporizing insurance companies as middle men was never seriously considered by Obama and his claque; that's why I at least have blamed him for from the beginning. I also worry that AHCA may inadvertently -- if I'm not being cynical -- lead us in a few years to Paul Ryan-style atomization whereby, as Claire McCaskill noted two weeks ago:

“The irony of this situation is that these are private insurance companies people will shop to buy their insurance. It’s not the government,” she told KMOX of St. Louis on Wednesday. “It’s exactly what Paul Ryan wants to do for Medicare.”

“It’s subsidized by the government — premium subsidies — which is exactly, this is the irony,” continued McCaskill, who faces a tough reelection battle this fall. “You think what Paul Ryan wants to do for seniors, you think it’s terrific. But when we want to provide private health insurance for people who don’t have insurance with subsidies from the government, you think it’s terrible.”

But, no, I have no interest in supporting the rescinding of court decisions that keep people with preexisting medical conditions and poor twentysomethings from the rolls.

Ezra Klein on Sunday:

As a result, Republicans’ long-term interests are probably best served by Democratic success. If the Affordable Care Act is repealed by the next president or rejected by the Supreme Court, Democrats will probably retrench, pursuing a strategy to expand Medicare and Medicaid on the way toward a single-payer system. That approach has, for them, two advantages that will loom quite large after the experience of the Affordable Care Act: It can be passed with 51 votes in the Senate through the budget reconciliation process, and it’s indisputably constitutional.

Conversely, if the Affordable Care Act not only survives but also succeeds, then Republicans have a good chance of exporting its private-insurers-and-exchanges model to Medicare and Medicaid, which would entrench the private health-insurance system in America.

That’s not the strategy Republicans are pursuing. Instead, they’re stuck fighting a war against a plan that they helped to conceive and, on a philosophical level, still believe in. No one has been more confounded by this turn of events than Alice Rivlin, the former White House budget director who supports the Affordable Care Act and helped Ryan design an early version of his Medicare premium-support proposal.

“I could never understand why Ryan didn’t support the exchanges in the Affordable Care Act,” Rivlin says. “In fact, I think he does, and he just doesn’t want to say so.”

yeah, that's what i mean by cognitive dissonance.

the first narrative outlined there seems hopeful but probably doesn't account for how many unexpected things can happen in a few years.

I don't see another health care battle that big happening this decade

that's the part Mr. Klein coughs past.

http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=679cbf1416232b6d947ae85b602d9038

made me lol

the teabags will find some way to contest an expansion of Medicaid or Medicare ... bank on it.

I knew a lot of people rooting for this bill because it was so flawed, the reasoning being that once it failed - either via SCOTUS or just over time - it would eventually lead to single payer.

not in the next ten years

yah people tend to over think things

Ten years until there are more favorable voter demographics?

until we're all dead of heart disease

actually the voter demographics will prob be even worse in 10 years, boomers will all be livin the medicare dream

so all the ilx leftists who complained that obamacare was just a giveaway to the insurance companies and worse than nothing at all: are ya'all getting psyched for the SCOTUS ruling?

given the avalanche of anti-choice legislation in the states that seems to me a direct consequence of Democratic bargaining/horse-trading during the HCB run-up, and the direct daily actual consequences of these new laws to people's rights under the constitution, my central objection to the HCB - that it preferred passage of itself in any form to standing on bedrock principle - stands

yeah well 'bedrock principle' doesn't get insurance for my little brother who has a pre-existing condition

given the avalanche of anti-choice legislation in the states that seems to me a direct consequence of Democratic bargaining/horse-trading during the HCB run-up

― tempestuous alaskan nites! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, March 28, 2012 10:52 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what

i really shouldve just c&pd the entire thing that is some incredibly tortured resoning

like us congresspeople were trading hcr votes for anti abortion votes w/state legislators

or new horrible state legislators were elected because of democratic dealing on hcr and then they passed anti choice laws

im struggling to piece this direct consequence together

it's honestly not that far from the logic that leads people to believe obama is a muslim, if you are spending this much energy doing mental gymnastics to try and frame something as poorly as possible then of course hcr was responsible for anti-choice legislation

yeah well 'bedrock principle' doesn't get insurance for my little brother who has a pre-existing condition

this is a weird argument coming from you - it's like me saying your right to breathe decent air doesn't trump how much I like my car

lagoon, the anti-choice people are pretty well-organized and responded to the health care bill process by introducing bills at county & state levels literally days after the bill was signed. this isn't "tortured reasoning," it's part of a long-term strategy of defining the terms of the abortion debate and introducing legislation as those terms shift.

lol as usual iatee you have no idea what you're talking about - anti-choice dudes talk openly about how stupak was a moment for them that indicated they could move forward with stuff they'd had waiting in the wings for a while

but terrific use of the "this isn't that different from HITLER" strategy - kudos

so what hcr is bad because it riled up some anti choice psychos

no no I never mentioned hilter I just think your thought process is really not very different from someone on the wacko right at this point

aerosmith, i gotta admit, your argument here is pretty wild.

so what hcr is bad because it riled up some anti choice psychos

no, hcr is good, but selling out the right to choose in the process because 'this is too important to not give some ground' didn't 'rile up some anti choice psychos.' it is costing people the right to choose abortion every single day in multiple states. agreeing to separate out reproductive rights from health care in the process has been catastrophic to people's settled rights under Roe. but if you're actually legit 'struggling to piece this "direct consequence" together' (to the best of my knowledge, nobody who's thought about the matter is) then we're not really gonna see eye to eye on this

here, Mordy.

but again - I didn't get this from there - this is something everybody actually already knows, it's not really a great mystery, much less Krazy Konspiracy talk, except to people for whom speaking ill of the health care bill is heresy

should you pass a great healthcare law, even if that'll galvanize your opponents to respond with even more horrendous legislation?

a. yes bc it's great enough to make the response worthwhile
b. yes bc it's great and you shouldn't make legislative decisions based on with what you think your political opponents will respond
c. no bc the response is too great to pass any healthcare law at all

for sure we'd agree (c) is false. you seem to be saying (a) but not (b), but i think most pplwould say (a) and (b).

am i breaking this down correctly?

i'm not rejecting your argument that anti-choice laws were passed as a direct response to the healthcare bill. i'm rejecting the principle underneath the assertion that means the law shouldn't have been passed in the first place

i'm rejecting the principle underneath the assertion that means the law shouldn't have been passed in the first place

the assertion is that the law should not have been passed with opt-out provisions, not that the law should not have been passed.

also, as a side note, is it true that democrats could've anticipated this response? bc obv you're asserting that they should've known (or did know) and chose not to act on that knowledge -- this is just a side note tho bc i think my real problem with your argument is what i wrote above

the assertion is that the law should not have been passed with opt-out provisions, not that the law should not have been passed.

― tempestuous alaskan nites! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, March 28, 2012 10:16 PM (6 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these are the same things

you don't get to pretend otherwise

also, are you saying (and this is an honest question, i defer to your expertise here) that if they hadn't passed this healthcare bill, the anti-choice legislation wouldn't have been legal? so if the bill is overthrown, the anti-choice legislation will also be overthrown?

bc certainly the arguments, "healthcare should've never been passed" and "now that healthcare has been passed, it should be overturned" aren't equivalent

just ftr

Much of this year’s (2009's) legislation arose from a 2007 United States Supreme Court decision upholding a federal ban on a late-term procedure that critics call partial-birth abortion, which gave lawmakers greater leeway to restrict abortion.

About 370 state bills regulating abortion were introduced in 2010, compared with about 350 in each of the previous five years, and 250 a year in the early 1990s, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. At least 24 of this year’s bills have passed, and the final total may reach the high of 2005, when states passed 34 laws, said Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the institute.

More significant than the number of bills introduced are the number and nature of those that passed, partisans on both sides agree.

“This is a good year as far as victories,” said Mary Spaulding Balch, director of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee, who named several states, including Arizona, Missouri and Tennessee, that are now more open to restrictive laws. “I do get the impression that the climate is friendlier.”

I don't think that answers any of my questions?

also, are you saying (and this is an honest question, i defer to your expertise here) that if they hadn't passed this healthcare bill, the anti-choice legislation wouldn't have been legal? so if the bill is overthrown, the anti-choice legislation will also be overthrown?

― Mordy, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:17 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if they hadnt passed the health care bill it wouldnt have been an issue because people being denied insurance coverage for abortions wouldve just had no insurance coverage at all

but if the healthcare bill is overthrown, all that anti-choice legislation remains, right? (u assume you're being wry here?)

i assume*

btw areo apologies re tortured reasoning, i really just had no idea what you were talking abt, totally forgot abt all that nasty stupak business, i mean yr reasoning is still a lil tortured but i understand what youre talking abt now

yes iatee I'm well aware of your position on this, the bill at any cost no matter what, long live the glorious bill.

also, are you saying (and this is an honest question, i defer to your expertise here) that if they hadn't passed this healthcare bill, the anti-choice legislation wouldn't have been legal? so if the bill is overthrown, the anti-choice legislation will also be overthrown?

it wouldn't even have been introduced. state exchanges have covered abortion for years; "§ 1303(a)(1) of the Affordable Care Act permits states to pass legislation to “opt out” of abortion coverage in their exchanges" (see preceding link). as I say, it was literally a matter of days before states (and counties; one county over from me was actually the test balloon on this one) saw numerous bills doing just that, and escalating into mandatory u/s laws, personhood bills, etc. 1303(a)(1) was, again using language from the preceding link, an "invitation." it was an invitation not worth sending at any cost; its costs are presently being felt by people as real as those who benefit from the AFA.

ok, i get that it wouldn't have been introduced. now, if it is overturned, will the anti-choice legislation also be overturned?

the part areo is talking abt applies specifically to hcr and the government subsidies to insure people who cant afford it

like if that's true that a lot of anti-choice legislation can only exist in a climate with hcr is the law of the land, i can understand the desire to see it overturned by SCOTUS

it can only exist because its acting on coverage that wasnt there before, its not taking government funded abortion coverage away from anyone

yes iatee I'm well aware of your position on this, the bill at any cost no matter what, long live the glorious bill.

well you see the alternative to a bill is not 'nothing happens', it's that hundreds of thousands of people continue to die, go bankrupt, live in suffering because they can't afford insurance or medicine. it's not this magical 'nothing happens' alternative that you choose to ignore in your mental calculus.

so if hcr is overthrown, we'll go back to "state exchanges have covered abortion for years"?

if they hadnt passed the health care bill it wouldnt have been an issue because people being denied insurance coverage for abortions wouldve just had no insurance coverage at all

this isn't true (see above) - state exchanges opted out & houses passed previously inconceivable legislation as a direct response to the above-cited provision. insurance that had previously covered abortion services (and, nb, birth control, which they've piggybacked now, because they feel like they've got the wind at their backs) now does not (Wake Co. did this one first I think)

xp no - the anti-choice legislation stays at the state levels no matter what happens. it's the only thing that cheeses me off for Christ's sake, I'm a fuckin commie, I think everybody should have free health insurance! I just take people's settled right to abortion very seriously. unlike, say, Democrats.

xxp no Mordy it's too late, the horse has left the barn - obviously I don't hope HCR is overturned, I just seethe that literally most democrats were more than happy to sell out Roe for it

there were no such thing as state insurance exchanges before hcr, i mean there still isnt such thing as that part of the law hasnt taken effect yet

i'm really out of my depth here on the facts on the ground front. i don't think aero's argument makes sense logically bc of above, but i can't really suss out state insurance exchanges, the impact of hcr on them, the impact of anti-choice legislation on hcr and on state exchanges, the impact the repeal would have on all the aforementioned, etc.

srsly you guys this piece here is way clear abt it

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/03/stupak_chart.html

these are exchanges that already existed, or exchanges invented by ACA?

wrt this sentence, "But § 1303(a)(1) of the Affordable Care Act permits states to pass legislation to “opt out” of abortion coverage in their exchanges."

invented

THE EXCHANGES DID NOT EXISIT BEFORE OBAMACARE

so then no horse has left the barn, right? if you repeal ACA, then those exchanges no longer exist, so the new legislation does nothing?

yes, but at least we haven't given up on our principles

and that's all that matters

the sick and dying people who exist, right now, in america, they do not matter

well you see the alternative to a bill is not 'nothing happens', it's that hundreds of thousands of people continue to die, go bankrupt, live in suffering because they can't afford insurance or medicine. it's not this magical 'nothing happens' alternative that you choose to ignore in your mental calculus

when you pass such legislation and excise reproductive health care from it you have done your own "ok, we can forget about these people's (largely women's) lives to get this thing we want" calculus - or, to be clearer, when you allow states to opt out of reproductive health care (wholesale; it's not just abortion we're talking about here, it's birth control, screenings, etc), thousands of people continue to suffer, have children they can't take care of, etc

if you repeal ACA, then those exchanges no longer exist, so the new legislation does nothing?

no - again, at state and county levels across the country, the door opened by stupak has has permenent consequences.

Many of these bills, however, contain provisions that are even more stringent than the original measure. For instance, some prohibitions apply not only to a state exchange but to the entire private health insurance market in that state, while others bar abortion coverage for state employees. Some include no exceptions for rape or incest. Others do not even include an exception to protect a woman’s life. Still others allow the purchase of supplemental insurance to cover abortion care, known as a rider, but only in the private market outside of the state’s exchange.

the sick and dying people who exist, right now, in america, they do not matter

lol this is exactly what you're saying, not me - you're just deciding which sick people merit care & which don't

there is no health system in the world that doesn't do that on some level

well as it says in that article thats been posted three times crazies have taking this opportunity to push for crazy legislation that while not having and legal connection to obamacare may have been made more possible by the political climate ie riling up anti choice psychos

Many of these bills, however, contain provisions that are even more stringent than the original measure. For instance, some prohibitions apply not only to a state exchange but to the entire private health insurance market in that state, while others bar abortion coverage for state employees. Some include no exceptions for rape or incest. Others do not even include an exception to protect a woman’s life. Still others allow the purchase of supplemental insurance to cover abortion care, known as a rider, but only in the private market outside of the state’s exchange.

like generally speaking I'm the guy on the horse who can't really see what the argt is but iatee here you seem completely unwilling to cop to the trade you're making - the exceptions you allow do exactly what you're saying is a horrible thing to do, i.e., deny people coverage for care they need. you have done some math and decided that's a trade worth making. I'm pointing out that when you (standing in here for Democrats) made that trade, you screwed over a lot of people who'll stay screwed whether the gains of the health care bill remain or are struck down

there is no health system in the world that doesn't do that on some level

dude I consider you a great & valuable corrective to my one-note stance but this here is beneath you - I could throw this line at you ten posts ago and you'd fade moral instead of practical

no - again, at state and county levels across the country, the door opened by stupak has has permenent consequences.

― tempestuous alaskan nites! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but see this is purely a psychological/political window, these laws thatre being proposed depend not at all on hcr from a legal pov, the hcr part only applies to like the hcr part, the rest is just riling up the psychos

they do not 'deny care' they just do not 'give care' to people who already do not have it. there is not an alternative that will exist anytime in the next 20 years.

again, your mental calculus conveniently doesn't incorporate the *alternatives*, the glourious bill either passes or does not pass, those are the two choices, there is not a choice where a better bill passes, you get to pick one of the two, you do not get to pick 'better bill passes', the other choice is 'bill does not pass'

press one button dude 'bill passes', 'bill does not pass', you do not get to find that secret button that nobody else found, because politics irl does not work like it does in your head, where nobody ever has to make compromises, politics is compromises, by definition, politics is everyone in america compromising with everyone else, that is why it sucks so much

yeah but see this is purely a psychological/political window, these laws thatre being proposed depend not at all on hcr from a legal pov, the hcr part only applies to like the hcr part, the rest is just riling up the psychos

dude that slash between "psychological" and "political" is doing an awful lot of work! however I don't actually know whether stupak opens an actual legal door or just an opportune one. I do think that the opening of the "psychological" door has daily, actual effects (read the Texas Observer piece I linked if you can stand it) on real actual people - the effect of the Senate (and not Congress, notably) caving on that isn't just "riling on the psychos." It's diminished care.

from the think progress piece, which is really quite good

*Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, and Oklahoma passed laws prohibiting private insurance plans and policies from covering “elective abortions” (the definition of which varies by state) prior to the health reform debate that resulted in the passage of the federal Affordable Care Act. Some permit the purchase of optional riders for coverage.

iatee you're not even remotely talking about what I'm talking about at this point you're just ranting. I'm glad there's a health care bill in place; some effects of the gamesmanship that excites you so during that bill have been utterly catastrophic in an area of health care that's of no concern to you, it seems, but which is of genuine concern to many. you check out of your "caring about people suffering" stance at this point and check into your "these are the realities" stance. that's fine, I do the same thing in saying that a bill that takes a year longer but doesn't close the door on a century's worth of hard-won gains in reproductive rights is a worthwhile trade. that's when you put on your "but people are dying" hat. it would be nice if you would wear that hat for poor women who will die without abortions, of whom there are also many.

no you see there was no scenario where it took a year longer but there was no opt-out, that is what would be called 'finding that secret button' but no dude, there is no secret button

I also prefer magical alternate worlds where everything is better, I prefer tons of them

so your position is, if the bill as it was passed does not pass exactly as it did, it would thereafter have been illegal for anybody to ever introduce a health care bill again in the history of the country

ok cool got it I didn't know that, learn something every day I guess

how hard or permanently does the bill close that door, aero- is this a permanent trade-off or a positive platform that can be built on? Do the benefits not included in the proposed bill exist as is but will be removed as a result, or will they remain unfulflled?

Straight q's as i'm ignorant here, i understand straight answers may not be possible/may not be clear atm.

dude that slash between "psychological" and "political" is doing an awful lot of work! however I don't actually know whether stupak opens an actual legal door or just an opportune one. I do think that the opening of the "psychological" door has daily, actual effects (read the Texas Observer piece I linked if you can stand it) on real actual people - the effect of the Senate (and not Congress, notably) caving on that isn't just "riling on the psychos." It's diminished care.

― tempestuous alaskan nites! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you always have to do the political calculus and these horrible state bills do have real effects, but taking the attitude that one should not pass widely beneficial legislation because it might give political cover for people to do terrible things that they already have the legal power to do and have in some cases already done is not going to get you very far, there are always potential adverse circumstances to change, and def hcr wouldve been better if it guaranteed full reproductive coverage, but that was out of reach because of peoples retrograde thinking the stupid gdamn filibuster

so your position is, if the bill as it was passed does not pass exactly as it did, it would thereafter have been illegal for anybody to ever introduce a health care bill again in the history of the country

― tempestuous alaskan nites! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:06 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a lot of democrats jumped ship on clintons plan because they thought they could get something better, before that they blocked nixons plan because they thought they could get something better, both those plans were better than obamacare, bird in hand man this was truly a rare window of opportunity

I had to lol at "a rare window of opportunity for a plan not as good as one advanced by Nixon"

so your position is, if the bill as it was passed does not pass exactly as it did, it would thereafter have been illegal for anybody to ever introduce a health care bill again in the history of the country

there was never going to be a better political climate and the failure and political consequences would have, at the very least, haunted the party as long as clinton's effort did. we had the kinda wave election congress that can only come from 8 years of dubya and a total economic collapse. and we still barely, barely scraped a fairly weak bill through the political process.

nixin'

nixons domestic policies were to the left of like 90% of todays elected democrats! this is the crazy world we live in

the world in which having a good hcr bill pass congress is impossible

yeah dude promoted universal health insurance

no I know Nixon's a complex cat it's just weird & lol is all

kinda lol mostly sad

so your position is, if the bill as it was passed does not pass exactly as it did, it would thereafter have been illegal for anybody to ever introduce a health care bill again in the history of the country

ok cool got it I didn't know that, learn something every day I guess

― tempestuous alaskan nites! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 29 March 2012 04:06 (9 minutes ago) Permalink

this is beneath you, bro

I do the same thing in saying that a bill that takes a year longer but doesn't close the door on a century's worth of hard-won gains in reproductive rights is a worthwhile trade.
― tempestuous alaskan nites! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, March 29, 2012 4:02 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a century's worth?

there was never going to be a better political climate and the failure and political consequences would have, at the very least, haunted the party as long as clinton's effort did. we had the kinda wave election congress that can only come from 8 years of dubya and a total economic collapse.

while I don't contest these claims necessarily, they're just claims - "there was never going to be a better political climate" is the most obviously dubious of them; if the health care situation is presently bad (it is), then "a better political climate" will exist when that situation's even worse, for example. still - I mean, you're probably right here. it is a real shame, for real people, please go read that Texas Observer article if you haven't, that the rhetorical/ideological ground granted (which is "real" ground - legislation is solid, but discourse is also important) has resulted in much suffering, and will result in more when this particular issue seems the best bargaining chip to Democrats - the suffering that they're willing to mark as less important.

xp Matt see above, he does in fact say the opportunity was never going to come again - and yes, a century, I date reproductive rights politics to Seneca Falls

so in that sense you're right, a century and a half, my bad

wait is birth control illegal now

THE DOOR IS CLOSED

wait is birth control illegal now

oh do stfu

you said we "closed the door" on a century of reproductive rights, it was ridiculous hyperbole

Roe v. Wade still stands, birth control is still legal etc etc

lol ok dude. significantly eroded a century's worth of gains. great contribution man, people might have gotten the wrong idea

yeah that's hyperbole. when we actually roll back women's reproductive rights to 1840s, i'll let you know.

xpost

btw i don't have a side in this issue.

then "a better political climate" will exist when that situation's even worse

well the ground situation getting worse most directly affects the poor and politically disenfranchised so it's actually really easy to keep it on the backburner, the situation has been continually 'even worse' for decades

I mean that's the unfortunate little quirk in this, most people are actually fine w/ their health insurance, and about 100% of people in positions of influence are fine with their health insurance. and that's gonna be true 10 years from now too.

xp man don't I know it I worked in health care for 10+ years, I know the realities on the ground or at least what they were as of 2003 - I worked in mental health, another area that routinely gets sold out in these deals as we move toward a prison model instead of a rehab/mainstreaming model & almost no-one on either side of the aisle blinks about it. the biggest risk from a compassionate perspective (beyond the obvious) is that Republicans will argue that a combo of free market & charity is the only solution (since state mechanisms "are bloated," "have failed" etc) & then torpedo services whose functions suffer owing to lack of resources

points which Democrats will concede, because they are horrible

lol ok dude. significantly eroded a century's worth of gains. great contribution man, people might have gotten the wrong idea

― tempestuous alaskan nites! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, March 29, 2012 4:31 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude I'm just pointing out how ott your posts on this subject are. it makes it almost impossible to have a real discussion with you about it.

STAY WITH US AERO

DON'T YOU GIVE UP ON US

lol in actual fact I kinda mean to give up on arguing about this on the internet, I've been doing IRL activism (which, lol, also means showing up and voting for Dems that I hate and then literally getting drunk w/other activists abt it) instead & it's rad

voting for Dems that I hate

i've heard that "the american experiment" is "on trial" in nc what with alec and that stuff in the nyer.

i guess i don't even know what to say except that i don't want you to give up arguing.

wait is birth control illegal now

― Matt Armstrong, Thursday, 29 March 2012 05:25 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was p weak grounds for sarcasm fwiw

In Monica Crowley's Nixon book the old man can't contain his excitement when Clinton mentions him by name in his health care speech to Congress ("Because of my brother, I'm a liberal when it comes to health care," he said without equivocation, for once).

Anecdotal: have a friend who was four and a half months along pregnant - second trimester - when they detected abnormalities, with the diagnosis that if the baby even survived it would be a hard barely-life life for the child. After much discussion they reluctantly decided to get an abortion, knowing it was the right thing to do. But they had to travel from Tennessee to Atlanta to get it done, and when they arrived, they had to run the gauntlet of horrible, evil, asshole protesters just to get the procedure done. This is the country we live in, and this is the direction the Republicans are even more fervently moving us toward. If the ACA falls, I can only imagine how emboldened these dicks will be, having unravelled not just the foremost Obama accomplishment but possibly greatest obstacle in the way of them killing us all slowly.

"most people are actually fine w/ their health insurance"

Is this actually true? I think most people are fine with their doctor(s). I think how most people feel about their health insurance is a lot more ambiguous than this. And I think most people are aware that rising healthcare costs are a serious problem regardless of the stability of their own health insurance (whether they blame that on health insurance is another matter, but the point is I guess that a lot of people understand that healthcare in this country is really pretty messed up.)

"If the ACA falls, I can only imagine how emboldened these dicks will be, having unravelled not just the foremost Obama accomplishment but possibly greatest obstacle in the way of them killing us all slowly."

Sadly I don't think the outcome of this case matters in terms of how these dicks will respond. I think they'll be up in arms and making life unpleasant for everyone else regardless of the outcome.

I am not fine with my health insurance, and I have great insurance compared with a lot of people. It's still really expensive, even as a relatively healthy person.

dahlia is not impressed http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/supreme_court_dispatches/2012/03/the_supreme_court_and_obamacare_the_justices_don_t_seem_to_like_any_of_their_options_with_the_affordable_care_act_.single.html

SCOTUSblog: http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/03/in-plain-english-is-half-a-loaf-better-than-no-loaf/

The law is dead I bet. It would be easier for people who want everyone to have afforable healthcare to all move to Canada than have healthcare for all here - remember , its the USA!

Justice Scalia, who admonished Kneedler that some provisions – such as the requirement that twenty-six-year-olds without insurance be allowed to stay on their parents’ policies – would “bankrupt the insurance companies, if not the states,” without the mandate.

Is Scalia right on this, would this bankrupt the insurance companies?

well that requirement already is in effect, and there is no mandate, and they have not gone bankrupt

the insurance companies can always you know charge more

yes but remember: Nino said on Tuesday that 26 year olds don't get or need insurance because they're healthy. Sotomayor made sure to remind him of the contradiction.

btw Sotomayor was generally awesome through this and now apologize for my criticism three years ago.

Is this actually true? I think most people are fine with their doctor(s). I think how most people feel about their health insurance is a lot more ambiguous than this. And I think most people are aware that rising healthcare costs are a serious problem regardless of the stability of their own health insurance (whether they blame that on health insurance is another matter, but the point is I guess that a lot of people understand that healthcare in this country is really pretty messed up.)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/the-gaggle/2009/09/01/poll-finds-large-majority-of-americans-happy-with-their-health-insurance.html

if that weren't the case single-payer would be an easy sell

yah problem is most people dont see their insurance costs cause theyre an obscured part of their paycheck

yup or they're old enough to be on medicare, so they don't have to give a fuck about the rest of the country

I hate my insurance.

yah problem is most people dont see their insurance costs cause theyre an obscured part of their paycheck

Truth. My employeer provided insurance cost me nearly $20K a year, not including them money I put into a health care savings account.

Whoops, that number is wrong, it's lower, but it is still high.

Actually, it's way off. Maybe my insurance is great. I'm retiring right now.

Could the five conservative justices strike down the entire health care law, and take us into what Kagan described this morning as a “revolution”? They could. Will they? I honestly have no idea anymore. As silent retreats go, this one was a lot less enlightening than I’d hoped.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/supreme_court_dispatches/2012/03/the_supreme_court_and_obamacare_the_justices_don_t_seem_to_like_any_of_their_options_with_the_affordable_care_act_.html

Lithwick's shock re Scalia et. al. really surprises me. When I read her prior piece to this one where she was seemingly stunned that Scalia would say, Ron Paul style, he had no problem with folks without health insurance being denied emergency room care; it had me wondering why is she taken aback by this? It's Scalia, it's garden-variety libertarian conservative thought on this.

should i actually start getting depressed about this?

id wait for the ruling

it's never too early to get depressed

if they don't turn over ACA, there are surely other things to shift your depression to

yah problem is most people dont see their insurance costs cause theyre an obscured part of their paycheck

― lag∞n, Thursday, March 29, 2012 10:25 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wait do most people with employer really not notice how much of their paycheck comes out for health insurance? I sure as hell do, it's like 10% of my net pay.

I was pretty upset about it when I found out too, b/c it was really not made clear how expensive it was when I accepted my job.

Scalia: Well, what seems to be the matter here?

Patient: I got my arm mangled in a lawn mower and I am bleeding to death as we speak.

Scalia: I'll need to see some proof of your ability to pay before I can treat you. (laughs) There's no such thing as a free lunch, y'know. (winks merrily)

Patient: (dies)

(laughter)

yah problem is most people dont see their insurance costs cause theyre an obscured part of their paycheck

― lag∞n, Thursday, March 29, 2012 10:25 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wait do most people with employer really not notice how much of their paycheck comes out for health insurance? I sure as hell do, it's like 10% of my net pay.

― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Thursday, March 29, 2012 11:32 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, hang on, Hurting is right here - - last job I had with insurance it was like half the conversation around the place - this plan sucks, the plan we had before you started here was good, we're paying too much, have you checked out aflac, etc etc. Maybe depends on how much you're making period...this was a restaurant and these were career wait-staff people, some in their 60s or early 70s and every penny taken off the paycheck was something to struggle over (though not, it turns out, unionize over).

Lol @ "Most people are fine with their health insurance"

that's not an opinion, it's a demonstrated fact

Lol

It is more true than ever, if the person's health insurance is Medicare.

right

they're fine with it until they get sick

xp

stockholm syndrome

really tho, if you don't understand the fact that most people *don't want a total overhaul of the health care system* because the costs are obscured to them and/or they don't see the problems directly affecting them and/or they already have government health care it's really hard to understand why we are where we are

I'm kinda more inclined to blame current situation on a deeply entrenched, bloated industry than on the voting public at large

I'll be honest, I never followed all the ins and outs of the health care fracas when it was actually going down, but wasn't there a lot of polling data that suggested a majority of Americans actually would support a single payer system if they could get it? Maybe just a matter of survey wording or something like that, but I remember reading these shocking numbers that basically amounted to, "yeah, the people want this but the insurance companies and their filibuster cronies won't give it to them."

most people *don't want a total overhaul of the health care system*

Yeah when you put it like that, it does seem like a lot of work. Hence the SCOTUS attitude.

really tho, if you don't understand the fact that most people *don't want a total overhaul of the health care system* because the costs are obscured to them and/or they don't see the problems directly affecting them and/or they already have government health care it's really hard to understand why we are where we are

― iatee, Thursday, March 29, 2012 11:44 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Come on man, this is fucking daft of you to say. Anyone who has non-govt health insurance notices (1) their premiums, (2) their co-pays, (3) any bullshit dealings they have with the insurance company regarding refusal to cover stuff they're supposed to cover.

I mean, as is maybe graphically obvious, this is from a sort of low-rent partisan website but

http://www.medicareforall.org/images/citizen_support.png

or

http://www.wpasinglepayer.org/PollResults.html

or

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/public-support-for-public-option.html

So when it comes to health care, we are to believe that most people think it is a matter of "if it is broken, don't fix it"? Have we all become hillbillies since the rise of the republicans?

Like, if you work for a living and do not have a trust fund, you notice how much shit costs you. This is not hard to understand or "obscured."

Silver is typically even-handed and critical of methods, finding several of the polls to be flawed, but:

Summary: The only poll I have a particularly high degree of confidence in is the Kaiser Family Foundation poll, which finds that between 65 and 68 percent of the public support a public option depending on how the question is phrased. The only thing I would change about their poll is to specify, as NBC/WSJ does, that the public plan would be administered by the government.

The other polls have one or more characteristics that give me pause about them. The question wording in the Consumers Union' poll is push-y and explicitly partisan; the question wording in the Rasmussen and Lake/HCAN polls is strange and probably implicitly partisan. The NBC/WSJ poll is otherwise terrific, but very difficult to interpret because they ask people about the importance of a public option, and not necessarily their support for one. I might be more comfortable with the ERBI poll if I learned more about it, but the comparative lack of disclosure coupled with the unusual choice to exclude adults 18-20 from the sample and a result that appears to be a mild outlier gives me some concerns about it.

Overall, polling points toward the public option being at least mildly popular and indeed perhaps quite popular. But more polling is required on this question....

obv lots of different things flying around in the polls (public option versus HCR with no public option, single paper versus ACA, god knows what else) - but it's hard to argue that there's some strong, solid majority of Americans that think the health insurance system, exactly as it is/was before HCR, is just dandy and why mess with it etc.

Like, if you work for a living and do not have a trust fund, you notice how much shit costs you. This is not hard to understand or "obscured."

what you pay $20 copay for your $500 doctor visit, the cost of the health care system is 'obscured' and you do not find it to be nearly as urgent an issue as the uninsured person who pays $500 for the $500 doctor visit.

Anyone who has non-govt health insurance notices (1) their premiums, (2) their co-pays, (3) any bullshit dealings they have with the insurance company regarding refusal to cover stuff they're supposed to cover.

Speak for yourself tbh. I have no idea what this stuff costs me, I just know that I can go to the GYN and the dentist when I need to.

yah srsly hurting et al this is not really that hard to understand

Yeah but let's say 3 months later you get a letter from Blueish asking you for that $500 you haven't paid, with no reason given why payment has been revoked. Get ready to waste hours on the phone navigating a bureaucracy just as daunting as anything a commie single-payer plan could devise.

sure some of the costs you have to deal with and some are obscured

xp No, I'm sure, but that has never happened to me, or anything even remotely like it. My insurance works, doesn't cost me much out of pocket, has great coverage, and I haven't had a baby or gotten really sick so I barely know I have it, but it covered my IUD 100% both times which I think means it's awesome.

I guess I mean notices enough to be unhappy about it, since most insurance sucks. Maybe I'm missing something here, but when you start a job, you usually don't start with insurance taken out. So you get a certain amount per check. Then one day you enroll, and the insurance comes out, and you get less per check. I would think most people notice that. Also if your premium goes up a lot, which it does, every year, I'd think you would notice that. And if you get a medical bill you have to pay, I think you'd notice that too. Unless you have a government plan that covers most everything and doesn't cost you much. I think most employers now leave a pretty hefty chunk of the premiums to the employees, but I could be wrong.

One of us is missing something, because I don't see it like that, but that could just be me, and obv it's my privilege that I work for a giant multi-nat corporation that's somewhat known for their benefits and perks and I barely have to think about this stuff.

Yeah, I think some people here just have really good insurance through their employers and/or make enough that what comes off the paycheck is, proportional to the rest of their income not something that really jumps out at them. That sounds like sniping but I'm honestly not trying to accuse anyone here of being a 1% plutocrat or whatever. Frankly I'm just jealous! The peace of mind y'all have is what I want. (I somehow teach at the university level and have no insurance so in this sense I was better off waiting tables, oops.)

yeah i dont think benefits are generally reflected on paychecks, its more like heres some extra stuff, which is how most people think of it, when of course they are actually paying for all that stuff

Typically both employees and employers pay significant amounts for the health plans. The piece the employers pay is most definitely obscured.

However, this leads to some possibly misguided assumptions:

1. ACA will result in significantly lower costs for health insurance.

2. If you stop getting health insurance through your employer, all of the saved money will somehow be added to your paycheck.

even if employers were just required to list employees entire compensation including benefits on on their paycheck and then subtract the health care costs from the total you could swing public opinion somewhat, studies have shown that many people just dont think of it that way, even though thats the way it is

2. If you stop getting health insurance through your employer, all of the saved money will somehow be added to your paycheck.

― Moodles, Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:11 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is what would happen based on what most economists understanding of how the job market work is

Also have to suspect there's a salaried/hourly difference going on here although I'm sure someone in the thread will prove me wrong - like, if you know you make X per hour and work X hours per week, it's easy to do mental math and know how much your paycheck STARTS at, and you don't have to break out a calculator to compare that to what your paycheck is, and so you at least glance over the stuff coming out.

the point is benefits dont come out of your paycheck

it's not that easy to do that mental math, how many people could tell you the amount their company is paying per employee health insurance off the top of their head?

xpost Um - mine always have. What?

Like, yes, employer share is obscured but I knew damn well what MY share out of my hourly was, it was printed on every pay stub.

sometimes benefits come out of your paycheck, sometimes they don't, in either case you don't know 'what the actual cost for your health insurance is' you just know how much you are paying

and even if you knew what the employer is paying per employee they're getting govt tax breaks which complicates thingss

people cannot just 'do this mental math', even people who really like doing mental math

wait the only way benefits don't come out of your paycheck is if you aren't paying a share of the premiums. Otherwise, your share, at very least, will directly come out of your paycheck and be listed on your paycheck. I understand your point about the employer share being obscured.

Okay, but we're now ranging away from the subject - - I would totally agree with you that huge amounts of the costs of the system become externalities that are not transparent or even thought about. But that's separate from whether people are aware that they pay money for the system and feel satisfied with it, which is where we started from.

that's an xpost to iatee

Well, we don't get paper paychecks anymore, haven't in probably 8 years, it's all electronic so honestly I never even look at it. Then with taxes and 401K withholdings and student loans and everything, what gets deposited into my acct is so much less than the beginning number that it hardly matters which $40 of that reduction is medical/dental.

Like, yes, employer share is obscured but I knew damn well what MY share out of my hourly was, it was printed on every pay stub.

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:15 PM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

exactly the part youre paying for is not a benefit, the part your employer pays for is the benefit, and you dont know how much it is even tho it is in reality coming out of your share

Also how are people not able to do mental math again? "I make three bucks an hour plus tips. I worked forty hours this week. That would be $120 because I've completed the second grade. My paycheck is $50. That means $70 has gone somewhere, because I've completed the first grade."

xp
Single payer would lead to significantly lower costs for health insurance. ACA most likely will do nothing to reduce the total cost of health care in the USA. Most savings created by single payer would be redirected to serve the health needs of the 50 million or so currently uncovered, and all the anticipated savings generated by ACA are redirected to bring more people under coverage, even though not everyone will actually become covered under ACA.

But that's separate from whether people are aware that they pay money for the system and feel satisfied with it, which is where we started from.

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people are satisfied w/the system as per polling, and people dont realize how much they pay for the system was always the point

Also how are people not able to do mental math again?

I know how much I pay from my paycheck, which is like $20. I don't know how much my employer is paying per employee so I do not know how much my health insurance costs and I don't know 'what I'm really getting paid'.

Would like to point out that the quality of state government job insurance is overrated. At least with the state of Illinois.

Also how are people not able to do mental math again? "I make three bucks an hour plus tips. I worked forty hours this week. That would be $120 because I've completed the second grade. My paycheck is $50. That means $70 has gone somewhere, because I've completed the first grade."

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:19 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for like the one millionth time when people are offed a benefit it is a thing that is in addition to their salary, when you pay for health care out of your salary that is a different thing

exactly, and that portion your employer pays will most definitely not find its way back to your paycheck if you opt out of your employer-provided insurance

you are wrong

because employment is a market

A non-monetary benefit is worth what it would cost the employee to replacement it. This makes it a money equivalent. In the case of health insurance, it is a high-value money equivalent.

I know how much I pay from my paycheck, which is like $20. I don't know how much my employer is paying per employee so I do not know how much my health insurance costs and I don't know 'what I'm really getting paid'.

all of this information is ON YOUR PAYCHECK

also I know for a fact that opting out gets you back the money because I am on my wife's insurance, therefore I don't have to have anything deducted from my paycheck for it

really tho, if you don't understand the fact that most people *don't want a total overhaul of the health care system* because the costs are obscured to them and/or they don't see the problems directly affecting them and/or they already have government health care it's really hard to understand why we are where we are

― iatee, Thursday, March 29, 2012 11:44 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Come on man, this is fucking daft of you to say. Anyone who has non-govt health insurance notices (1) their premiums, (2) their co-pays, (3) any bullshit dealings they have with the insurance company regarding refusal to cover stuff they're supposed to cover.

― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Thursday, March 29, 2012 11:53 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure what is so difficult to grasp about Hurting's comment here. These benefits you describe sound wonderful and you are probably right that the people who have them don't understand or care about the shadowy math behind them - - - but they are not the Americans that Hurting and I are talking about and who, as the polling data posted above would support, want an overhaul of the health care system. I don't know why you guys are so desperate to prove that Americans are ignorant bumpkins who oppose doing anything to the health care system and have no idea that their crappy expensive insurance is crappy and expensive.

uh, "replace it" (trying to keep up with the fast flow here)

all of this information is ON YOUR PAYCHECK

no...it is not

exactly, and that portion your employer pays will most definitely not find its way back to your paycheck if you opt out of your employer-provided insurance

― Moodles, Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:24 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like on a individual basis maybe it wouldnt work, but if the usa adopted single payer tomorrow it would most definitely be reflected in salaries going way up across the board, that would of course be offset by high taxes to pay for the health care

no...it is not

sorry I misread your post

Like, I would love to have these great jobs you have where you make so much and the benefits package is so great that health insurance being just part of that constellation of things is, like, hey, sweet, I don't have to pay for health care - - - but can you please separate that from generalizations about what everybody else has? aka

I'm not sure how banal some of these are - I mean, Biggie saying he's got his condo and car paid for is more of a specific statement about wealth and success, right? It may not be all that thrilling but it's not exactly filling time with chatter that would be true of anybody...

― Doctor Casino, Saturday, March 21, 2009 1:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, and the reason that Rakim talks about fish, is because in the song he's broke and fish is a luxury. I picture ilxors sitting around eating giant salmon steaks being all "ho hum this is so BORING."

― poxyfuzak (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, March 21, 2009 2:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude it's not some bragging thing, it's what a large % of americans have, which is why this is such a complicated problem

it's *a bad thing*

but they are not the Americans that Hurting and I are talking about and who, as the polling data posted above would support, want an overhaul of the health care system. I don't know why you guys are so desperate to prove that Americans are ignorant bumpkins who oppose doing anything to the health care system and have no idea that their crappy expensive insurance is crappy and expensive.

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:28 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

theres only one america dawg, and all the data shows that people generally dont understand the full costs of healthcare, this doesnt make them ignorant bumpkins it just makes the system unnecessarily obscure, i mean you yourself have show a great deal of lack of understanding of how it works on this very thread!

speaking of salmon steaks, shouldn't you guys be lunching?

Dude, all i was trying to dispute is the claim that Americans like the current system and oppose an overhaul. How this became a debate over how much of the current system we understand, I don't know.

i mean once again this starts from:

really tho, if you don't understand the fact that most people *don't want a total overhaul of the health care system* because the costs are obscured to them and/or they don't see the problems directly affecting them and/or they already have government health care it's really hard to understand why we are where we are

― iatee, Thursday, March 29, 2012 11:44 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess i just "don't understand" the "fact"

some americans love the current system - old people and veterans, for example. some americans like it okay. some americans are uninsured and dying. some americans are fine with their insurance and have no health problems but know that the system is fucked up. some people going to be against all and anything the democrats propose, and have convinced themselves to love the health care system out of spite.

but *most people* do not believe they are being fucked by the system so badly that a radical overhaul is necessary. *most people* are not uninsured.

Okay, so going back to the polling data I brought up upthread - maybe I missed the post where that was debunked. I agree with Nate Silver's old post that it certainly has some gaps, the questions are flawed, etc., etc - - but is there any robust body of polls that supports your position? If there is I'll shut up, but otherwise we're just trading anecdotals - - the people I've worked with cared about it a LOT and thought the system was terrible, others on this thread work with people where it's not a big deal and they don't even glance at that line of their paycheck (or, their health care is structured in a way that it does not show up on paycheck and is therefore invisible etc) - - - but obviously swapping our experiences isn't going to get us very far in terms of what "*most people*" believe.

the upcoming repeal of ACA is why americans can't have nice things

studies have shown, dude

A large percentage of people, according to polls I've seen, still don't understand anything about the legislation and a bunch think they're going to somehow lose their employer-provided insurance and have to buy their own. The fact that 95% of people aren't going to see a significant change, except for the fact that lifetime limits and the like are actually going away, is not what people think is going on.

People don't fucking understand healthcare costs or how insurance actually works, is what I've learned.

Okay, so going back to the polling data I brought up upthread - maybe I missed the post where that was debunked. I agree with Nate Silver's old post that it certainly has some gaps, the questions are flawed, etc., etc - - but is there any robust body of polls that supports your position? If there is I'll shut up, but otherwise we're just trading anecdotals - - the people I've worked with cared about it a LOT and thought the system was terrible, others on this thread work with people where it's not a big deal and they don't even glance at that line of their paycheck (or, their health care is structured in a way that it does not show up on paycheck and is therefore invisible etc) - - - but obviously swapping our experiences isn't going to get us very far in terms of what "*most people*" believe.

well those polls were 'do you think single payer should exist as a concept' which is like saying 'do you think LA should have a large and robust subway system', that polls pretty well in LA in 2012, the problem is that people while people support the *idea* of these things the actual process is pretty complicated and involves a lot of things that people might not support in isolation, for the LA example the same people who support a massive subway system might not support their road being narrowed or a station too close to their building or a massive tax hike to pay for it. when people begin to see a detail in the overhaul that might mean something *taken away* from them, be it money or flexibility or convenience, their weak support fades away pretty fast.

the people you worked with in a restaurant are not representative of 'the average american', they are the people who are being disproportionally fucked and so they find the issue considerably more important than yr average office worker w/ 'okay health insurance' who doesn't think about it that much or have major health problems or an old person who is already draining our national resources and kicking it in some shitty florida old age home.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/US/healthcare031020_poll.html

In an extensive ABCNEWS/Washington Post poll, Americans by a 2-1 margin, 62-32 percent, prefer a universal health insurance program over the current employer-based system. That support, however, is conditional: It falls to fewer than four in 10 if it means a limited choice of doctors, or waiting lists for non-emergency treatments.

which is pretty headdesky in that people already have a limited choice of doctors and waiting lists for some non-emergency treatments

Also all of this taking place in a media environment where LOTS of money is being spent by insurers to make sure misinformation is widespread.

Fair enough about the LA subway system - - - not so sure that ABCNews quote is so damning though. "It falls to fewer than 4 in 10 if it means certain specific and naturally really unpopular things that might or might not be at issue here at all." It's not clear, for example, that single-payer necessitates a limited choices of doctors, certainly not more limited than the choice of doctors I had with my last private insurance plan. So that's a pretty specific variation on which to hinge the claim that people don't support it once it hits the real world. Also, it'd be nice to see the current system bear the same burden of robust, specific polling questions, ie, compare results when people are asked "do you like the current health insurance system" versus "do you like the current health insurance system despite the current lack of choice and added cost from bureaucracy" or whatever. Now, that's push polling, but it seems about as good as the ABCNews one which is borderline misinformation in terms of asking people to imagine certain specific downsides of (one variation of) a new system...

BTW would be interested to see some kind of real statistical breakdown of who has what kind of insurance and how much they care about the issue. I'm not 100% convinced that your white-collar cubicle Americans are more 'average' than my Holiday Inn wait staff. I admit my main reference point here for Office World is that early episode of The Office, which centered around everybody being really pissed off that their health insurance plan sucked and was about to get suckier, but obviously a TV show (even an enormous hit show) isn't really a precise window into the American Zeitgeist or w/e.

well all of these polls have to be put in context that most americans don't know shit about shit. "despite the current lack of choice and added cost from bureaucracy" doesn't mean anything to most people. most peoples knowledge of health care doesn't go much further than their own personal experience, and most peoples personal experience isn't miserable enough for it to be a super pressing issue for most people or something that they're going to read up on.

Doctor Casino OTM about the incredibly loaded language in that ABC poll which manages to knock the totals down.

iatee OTM insofar as the people in question 1) Have health insurance and 2) Have never really had to use it (cf Laurel). Once that equation changes I think you'd see the people supporting the current system shriveling to a fucking sliver of 1%.

Whether or not most people are actually satisfied with their health insurance, I think a lot (maybe even most) people are also terrified about losing their health insurance which is part of why universal health coverage and the public option tend to poll pretty well (it also indicates to me that they do on some level understand what health care costs.)

WASHINGTON (AP) - While the rest of us have to wait until June, the justices of the Supreme Court will know the likely outcome of the historic health care case by the time they go home this weekend.

After months of anticipation, thousands of pages of briefs and more than six hours of arguments, the justices will vote on the fate of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul in under an hour Friday morning. They will meet in a wood-paneled conference room on the court's main floor. No one else will be present.

In the weeks after this meeting, individual votes can change. Even who wins can change, as the justices read each other's draft opinions and dissents.

But Friday's vote, which each justice probably will record and many will keep for posterity, will be followed soon after by the assignment of a single justice to write a majority opinion, or in a case this complex, perhaps two or more justices to tackle different issues. That's where the hard work begins, with the clock ticking toward the end of the court's work in early summer.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120330/D9TQLQDO0.html

many will keep for posterity

now would he know this unless he gets cocktails with Nino and Sonia?

*how

scalia expiring via heart attack while preparing to cast his vote would be the most poetic thing that should happen

Keep it in your pants, Romeo.

ew

http://dakiniland.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/fat-tony-and-uncle-tom.jpg?w=371&h=294

Whether or not most people are actually satisfied with their health insurance, I think a lot (maybe even most) people are also terrified about losing their health insurance which is part of why universal health coverage and the public option tend to poll pretty well (it also indicates to me that they do on some level understand what health care costs.)

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, March 30, 2012 8:05 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but remember 'losing their health care' includes 'government takes away their health care' - the fact that the market is so fucked up and scary gives people who do have 'okay' health care a bunker mentality

gubment gonna take away my healthcare and give it to the poors and lazies

we need to drill for more healthcare

which is pretty headdesky in that people already have a limited choice of doctors and waiting lists for some non-emergency treatments

lol people barely "choose" doctors at all - they go to whoever they're already seeing or get assigned, "choice of physician" for most people means "please don't make me have to figure out who I wanna be seen by, this guy seems OK I'll stick w/him"

interesting thing on that subject: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/dying-for-satisfaction-being-happy-with-your-doctor-is-bad-for-your-health.html

That's not true. If you've got insurance, you also have the option of checking to see which physicians are closest to your home; that's how I got mine five years ago. This, however, does depend on whether physicians will accept new patients.

xpost

also : http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/03/doctors-dominate.html

6 Catholics on the Court, 5 of 'em conservative. Has the recent discussions re Catholic hospitals and contraception and health insurance influenced their vote? Here's an over-the-top National Review right-wing take

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/294860/supremes-and-catholic-charities-benjamin-zycher

One trivial thought that I have not seen elsewhere: I wonder if the Left/Obama/Kathleen Sebelius didn’t shoot themselves in the backside when they decided to apply a chainsaw to the religious liberty of the Catholic hospitals, etc. That episode, I think, brought out in sharp relief the unprecedented degree of coercion inexorably inherent in Obamacare, the eagerness with which the Left employs it, and the thoughtlessness with which the Left is willing to destroy the institutions of civil society as they pursue their political goals. They really believe that people of religious faith are simpletons standing in the way of ever-greater individual dependence upon Leviathan.

Have not has

I wonder if the Left/Obama/Kathleen Sebelius didn’t shoot themselves in the backside when they decided to apply a chainsaw

"I wonder how many metaphors we can mix"

confirming what we already know

i don't know whether to be upset, angry or just apathetic. i think the third is best for my ongoing mental health but it's hard not to be bummed out by this entire situation

http://go.bloomberg.com/health-care-supreme-court/2012-03-29/gop-ad-uses-doctored-scotus-audio/

brought out in sharp relief the unprecedented degree of coercion inexorably inherent

I sentence this writer to death.

Benjamin Zycher is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a
senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.

So do you have to submit writing samples with phrasing like that to join those groups, and to write for the National Review; and/or does the National Review edit them to add in more such language?

they just lay eggs in yr brain iirc

it seems to me that if SCOTUS overturns ACA, a) it will be crystal clear how right-wing this court is and b) the argument that even DINO presidents should be supported to protect rulings like RvW in the SCOTUS will gain new emphasis

the Supremes have been whittling away at roe v. wade since, like, the 1990s ... it's their whittling away at Commerce Clause jurisdiction that makes me livid.

but yeah yeah i know it's roe v. wade that gets more people ready to take it to the streets and to reach into their pockets than boring shit like the Commerce Clause.

Citizens United and Bush v. Gore should have convinced everyone but Supreme Court arguments w/r/t presidential elections still get eyerolls from a lot of liberals.

GOP realizing it needs, er, options should SCOTUS scrap the AHCA.

Jesus Christ are they dumbshits, if it gets dumped they'll still try to bring 95% of it back but try to NOT call it "Obamacare." really, the left needs to start owning that piece of rhetoric for all the good parts.

The party has conceded (a) we need to keep kids on parents' insurance until 26 (b) we need healthy people in the pool otherwise (c) health care costs will continue climbing. Therefore the federal government is powerless to insist?

I give no credit to Dems for brains.

If there was a real public option here, I'd care a whole lot more.

I care a whole lot, because of family members who are unable to get private insurance because of their pre-existing conditions. : /

do they not realize they can just go to the emergency room?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_04/blackrobed_partisans036475.php#

Showboating 5th Circuit Judge vs. Obama on healthcare commentary (Obama since this linked blogpost, added more nuance to his comments)

How Toobin turned into a crybaby last week.

The Associated Press, everybody:

“If Republicans have moved to the right on health care, it’s also true that Obama has moved to the left,” reads an AP wrap on the Obama speech. “He strenuously opposed a mandate forcing people to obtain health insurance until he won office and changed his mind.”

ah yes the mandate, developed by those infamous leftists at the heritage foundation

"None of this is going to hinge on any of the arguments made in the court so all the hand-wringing about how shitty the SG's performance is are just lame. Jeff Toobin should know better frankly.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

Apparently he knew better and just decided it was better to be talked about.

The Associated Press, everybody:

“If Republicans have moved to the right on health care, it’s also true that Obama has moved to the left,” reads an AP wrap on the Obama speech. “He strenuously opposed a mandate forcing people to obtain health insurance until he won office and changed his mind.”

― Matt Armstrong, Wednesday, April 4, 2012 5:32 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

amazing

(Aimless addresses Congress:)

Gee, guys! You know what would be a neat-o idea? Letting anyone who wants to be covered by Medicare do so, and run it like an insurance company, only not for profit, so the premuims could be kept low, and use the power of collective bargaining to reduce costs on stuff like pharmaceuticals. Sounds great, huh? And the beauty of it... no mandates! Simple as pie.

Guys? Yoo-hoo! Hey! Come back here! I want to know what you guys think of my idea.

"But patients would face more up-front costs and would therefore have incentives to become more discerning consumers of health care, he said."

The phrase "discerning consumers of health care" makes me want to beat someone with a tire iron, tbh

Aimless, people would still try to buy that insurance once they became sick or had an accident. Because you can't make me pay for insurance!!

i am a discerning consumer of sickness

tbh, I still want a single-payer goverment health care system. It's the sanest alternative by a wide chalk. But politically speaking that idea is going nowhere fast under the present regime.

otm

This former clerk of Chief Justice Berger briefly addresses what's most worrisome about the AHCA. Digby's expressed her fears too.

noooo way social security gets any 'market elements' post-great recession

Got a refund check today because Mega didn't spend 80% of premiums on patient care in 2011. HAW!...oh wait.

funny thread title in retrospect

indeed

I wonder how many people are going to get these surprise checks and if it'll have any discernable nationwide stimulus-by-proxy effect.

Can anyone help me refute this?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/337658/pity-young-katrina-trinko