“The hidden shortfall between new spending and new taxes was revealed just after Supreme Court justices grilled the law’s supporters about its compliance with the Constitution’s limits on government activity. If the court doesn’t strike down the law, it will force taxpayers find another $17 trillion to pay for the increased spending. The $17 trillion in extra promises was revealed by an analysis of the law’s long-term requirements. The additional obligations, when combined with existing Medicare and Medicaid funding shortfalls, leaves taxpayers on the hook for an extra $82 trillion in health care obligations over the next 75 years.”
“Tuesday, March 23 marked the two-year anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) and the largest transfer of power from Congress to the Administration in the history of this nation. As the Supreme Court hears arguments about PPACA on Constitutional grounds – the individual mandate, in particular – let’s not be lulled into thinking its broader assumptions and provisions are otherwise innocuous or valid. Setting aside the need to address legitimate reform, including egregious problems with pre-existing condition rules on the insurance side, there’s the bigger problem of healthcare delivery and the fundamental safety of this sector of the industry.”
“Hitherto, most attention has been given to whether Congress, under its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, may coerce individuals into engaging in commerce by buying health insurance. Now the Institute for Justice (IJ), a libertarian public interest law firm, has focused on this fact: The individual mandate is incompatible with centuries of contract law. This is so because a compulsory contract is an oxymoron.”
“The Obama administration rushed its landmark health law to the Supreme Court to get some clarity over its future. So far, all they have is mud. After three days and six hours of arguments, a core provision in President Barack Obama’s signature health law appears to be in serious danger. And Wednesday, it looked quite possible that the entire law could fall.”
“While the Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Congress is holding hearings on the federal regulatory process. The two topics are more closely related than you might think. The healthcare law required many regulations, and thus far, the major regulations issued to implement the Affordable Care Act serve as ugly poster children for the regulatory reform movement.”
“Now that the Supreme Court has concluded hearings on the president’s health law, many states find themselves in a holding pattern, postponing major decisions about the law until they get some constitutional clarity.
But states shouldn’t wait on the Supreme Court to oppose implementation of this harmful law.”
“The great irony is that, for all the talk of Obamacare’s death panels—bodies of unelected government officials that would ration care for the elderly—it’s another unelected panel, the Supreme Court, that may end up delivering the kiss of death to the ACA.”
“For along with the dollars-and-cents issues, ObamaCare nationalizes a number of big moral and philosophical questions, some of the same ones Madison was sure would stay at the states’ level. The most obvious of these concern our concepts of justice, charity, liberty, and even more profoundly, questions of when life begins and how it should end.”
“Republican lawmakers leaving oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed that the government will have a tough time finding a fifth justice to uphold the health law’s individual mandate. Democrats for their part found solace in pointed questioning of lawyers on both sides of the argument by Justices Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts. Their outlook coming out of the court, however, was visibly less sunny than the Republicans’.”
“Could gay conservatives have the answer to ObamaCare? Gay Americans understandably chafe at the way the tax code discriminates against them with regard to health insurance. If you are heterosexual, the insurance provided your spouse by your company is treated as a benefit—which means it is untaxed. If, by contrast, you are gay, the insurance provided your spouse or partner by your company can be treated as income—which means taxed.”