HellScare Law on Life Support, GOP Poised for Big Wins

[Karin]

Poiuyt  (1000+ posts)      Fri Aug-12-11 02:06 PM
Original message
U.S. appeals court rules against Obama health care law
 WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court ruled Friday that President Barack Obama's healthcare law requiring Americans to buy healthcare insurance or face a penalty was unconstitutional, a blow to the White House.

The U.S. Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, found that Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to buy coverage, but also ruled that the rest of the wide-ranging law could remain in effect.

The legality of the so-called individual mandate, a cornerstone of the healthcare law, is widely expected to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Obama administration has defended the provision as constitutional.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44121956/ns/politics-white_...
 

  Breaking News!

Anyway, I wanted to highlight these:

BlueDemKev (1000+ posts)      Fri Aug-12-11 02:20 PM
Response to Reply #5
10. Like this.....
 ....insurance companies will have to raise their premiums extremely high (to cover all the folks with pre-existing conditions who are over-represented in their clientele base), the people will be outraged at the astronomical cost of health insurance, which will guarantee an effortless repeal by a Republican Congress and President in 2013. 

BlueDemKev (1000+ posts)      Fri Aug-12-11 02:34 PM
Response to Reply #13
29. Oh sure, SINGLE PAYER doesn't have a chance now....
 ...with Republicans about to take over in 2012 (both Congress and the White House), after they pack the Supreme Court with Samuel Alitos, anything a future liberal Congress tries to do to help the country will be ruled unconstitutional as an "overreach" of federal power.

 

 

DUmp Link

[DumbAss Tanker]

The amount of the penalty would have been totally insufficient to cover the shortfall in the program that was obviously going to result from the fact that is was far cheaper to just pay the penalty than buy insurance.  The logic of the entire arrangement NEVER added up to any kind of rational outcome.

[ReaganForRushmore]

Actually a victory for the Administration. A huge one. By the 11th Appeals Court approving the rest of Obamacare can stay in place, the Court very quietly eliminated severability as the way to eliminate the ENTIRE bill. When Pelosi and Company wrote the bill, they neglected to include the provision that if one portion of the bill is declared unconstitutional, the remaining bill would remain intact. Now, thanks to the 11th creating something in the bill that wasn't included, Obama now gets to claim victory, eliminate the provision, and still allow the main tenets of Obama care to be enacted in 2014. This is why judges should should not legislate from the bench. The bill should have been judged on it's total merits AS ORIGINALLY VOTED ON and not tweaked judicially. The entire bill should have been ruled unconstitutional.

[Karin]

The mandate is the central tenet.  The whole thing falls apart without it. 

[Chris_]

Wasn't the individual requirement supposed to account for half the funding?  The rest was caged from Medicare and additional taxes and spending.

[BattleHymn]

Ah.  The 2012 elections are going to be a sight to behold on the DUmp.  I can hardly wait.   

[DumbAss Tanker]

The mandate is the central tenet.  The whole thing falls apart without it. 

Yep.  And severability is not required to be in the statute for an unConstitutional part of one to be severed, but it helps.  Courts look at whether the rejected provision is so central to the bill that throwing out the one provision renders the whole law functionally invalid, which the penalty clause doesn't, under a 'totality of the circumstances' sort of approach.  The penalty is simply a mechanism among many possible mechanisms to make people join, and throwing it out only makes the law FISCALLY impossible, not functionally impossible; Congress is free to explore some other, more-lawful means to get people in the program.  Fortunately with the change in composition of Congress, that's going to be a damned tough sell.