SCOTUS Health Care Decision Liveblog

Estimated time of the decision is 10:15 am EDT, as there are a couple of other decisions to release and it will be a madhouse of reporters and advocates trying to run out of the low-tech court after the release of the decision on the Affordable Care Act.

11:37 EDT Update: Decision  Linque to SCOTUS opinions here.

10:33 EDT Update:

Per Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog, who either has a copy in her hand or is secretly blogging from inside the court:

In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

53 Comments

Per SCOTUSblog:

The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government’s power to terminate states’ Medicaid funds is narrowly read.

@mellbell:
Health Insurance Money >>> Conservitard “Principles”

@mellbell: And Roberts went with the majority, as Linda Greenhouse had predicted after he went with the majority in the Arizona immigration decision.

I really want to read this goddamned opinion for my fucking self. Getting impatient with the Interwebs.

@ManchuCandidate: Preserving the private health insurance market is totally the conservative thing to do. The trouble is many conservatives these days are radicals in sheep’s clothing.

I can already hear the shrieking elsewhere… seems like there is going to be a few aneurisms and heart attacks happening as we speak, but fortunately/unfortunately they can be treated without too much fuss.

TPM: “Chief Justice John Roberts voted to uphold the ‘Obamacare’ individual mandate.

Via SCOTUSblog: “So the mandate is constitutional. Chief Justice Roberts joins the left of the Court.””

@blogenfreude: And the wingnuts call for Roberts’ impeachment in 3…2…1…

@mellbell: Oh you mean how the Heritage Foundation pushed the individual mandate for 20 years until the black man adopted the idea?

@ManchuCandidate: A small part of me was hoping that the whole thing would be struck down with the instruction that the only constitutional system would be single-payer universal health care, but Roberts is smarter than that. ACA is still better than what we’ve got now in this country (nothing) but you all in Canada City still have the smarter system.

Oh! So my kid is covered until he’s 26 and still a student?

Hope that part extends to kids covered by military health ins. Probably doesn’t.

@ManchuCandidate: One can only hope that Scalia stroked out while reading his dissent.

Is Scalia writing his own dissent? I want to see that fucker’s insanity in its full entirety.

@SanFranLefty:
The Teabaggers won’t see it that way, but yeah. Striking down ACA would have probably led to the even greater monster, SINGLE PAYER.

@rptrcub:
Probably smearing the feces and tears of rage on paper as we post.

@ManchuCandidate: @mellbell: Kennedy thinks the whole thing should have been struck down. Reading from the bench per SCOTUSblog.

Post the decision, motherfucking Judiciary hamsters!

@SanFranLefty: What is the official name of this case?

Should Stinque send a gift box of fresh broccoli to Scalia?

@rptrcub: Florida v. U.S. Dep’t of Health and Human Services, I believe.

WTF. Excuse me. Let’s try National Federation of Independent Businesses et al. v. Sebelius

@SanFranLefty:

While single payer would have been unquestionably better, I have almost no hope of seeing such a system in this country any time in the next 50 years, especially in the wake of the Citizens United ruling.

Not only that, but I would also expect to see right-wing efforts to dismantle Medicare redoubled after such a ruling, given that really, the only potential shortcut to arriving at single payer in this nation is through an expansion of the program.

Scalia didn’t write his own vomitous opinion. :(

@SanFranLefty: I can imagine the call to Edible Arrangements now — “So I know y’all normally only do fruit, but this is a really special occasion…”

Maybe if Obama ran on an anti-suicide platform, the RepubliKKKans would blow their brains out in protest.

John Boehner must be a particularly bright shade of orange today. And the Repubs find out that it isn’t the same when the ball they’re spiking is deflated.

So, does this make Hope ™ a pre-existing condition?

Well, dammit. Someone forwarded an argument a while ago that the Mandate was basically a target drone, to be shot down by SCOTUS to clear the way for single-payer. I was looking forward to that fight.

I know Black Eagle was doing the best he thought he could, but I really wanted to see us get to single-payer. This Mandate crap is annoying, and just feeds the private companies more suckers.

I’m chalking this one up to Roberts’ concern about his legacy.

@Beggars Biscuit: yes, but hope must covered by the time the 2016 election rolls around now. problem is who do we hope for? hillary? alan grayson?

here’s a good sign though. our company’s health insurance agent (who has raised our premiums 7 years in a row now) rents an office from us. he has a home made palin sticker on his truck where he scraped mccain off the top of an old mccain/palin sticker. he is highly pissed off this morning worrying about his win streak coming to an end.

And right on cue, the Stupids come out of the woodwork.

@flippin eck:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha-breath-hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha

Wait till they find out about the horrors of living under the tyranny of single payer.

So this thing that hasn’t happened will happen, instead of not happening at all, and now I can rejoice in the fact that maybe I’ll live long enough to see it.

Also, everybody who said that oral arguments lack any predictive value was right, although they were drowned out by everybody else.

Mittens is an inbred (that’s a true statement) dumbass (also true).

ENSURE not ASSURE!

I am SOOOOOO weary of stupid presidents/candidates. Weren’t these assholes, like, afforded, in every sense of the fucking word, a great fucking education? They have no excuse for being retarded besides being retarded. Fucking lazy-ass inbred legacies. Who has a sense of entitlement? Not the poor. These assholes do. I hate them.

@JNOV: I loves me the En Words, but that’s a losing battle.

@flippin eck: You never can tell, but I’d wager that a plurality (or more) of those are tongue-in-check.

@flippin eck: I would like to think that those aren’t real and it’s satire, but the sad thing is it’s just like the “Government get out of my Medicare” sign.
Thus proving JNOV‘s point that the stoopid is everywhere.

@flippin eck: He’s not on BuzzFeed’s list, but I know one prankster out there who specializes in (a) collecting those kinds of tweets, and (b) generating them himself.

A more trustworthy source for Entertaining Anguish would be something like RedState comments. Much like tracking PUMAs four years ago.

@flippin eck: I stopped at the first one because the cluelessness was off the scale. And what kind of health care do we have in Canada, Don Pardo?

@nojo: Averse vs. adverse. :-) (Yeah, no En.)

@nojo: Noje et al: I make no apologies for finding those tweets vastly amusing, fake or not.

@Dodgerblue:

+1

Also, Scalia’s dissent reads like it was initially drafted as an attempt at a majority opinion. This suggests that Roberts may have been a late flip or that Scalia was attempting to lure him over to the dark side up until the last second.

@Walking Still: Guess we’ll have to wait a couple of years for Bob Woodward to make up their conversations.

@flippin eck: No doubt their grandparents coined the phrase “Government Get Your Hands Off My Medicare!” (corrected for spelling)

@ManchuCandidate: Not to comment bump, but I have to do it for you because (a) I’ve been known to do it before, and (b) this comment of yours had me giggling/barfing at the mental image all day long.

Well played, kemosabe. Light-sabers, mixed metaphors, such as.

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