“Essentially, the Court struck down the mandate while retaining the penalty. So those champions of Obamacare who relied on behavioral economics to argue that the law’s individual mandate could be sufficient to avert an insurance death spiral must now contend with the fact that the Court has closed off that argument.”
“But as they gathered here this weekend at a meeting of the National Governors Association, most governors in both parties said that faced with a choice they did not expect to have, they needed to study how to proceed with this significant change in federal-state relations. Not all Democrats were leaping at the chance to expand their programs, and not all Republicans were ruling it out.”
“How about the fact that health reform really isn’t paid for? That half the dollars needed to pay for it will require Medicare cuts so draconian that Congress is unlikely to ever let them take place? Hmm…You don’t remember reading about that? What about the fact that families at the same income level will get vastly different subsidies under the reform — differences that amount to $10,000 a year or more? Ahh…You didn’t read about that either?”
“Republicans on a House Appropriations subcommittee beat back Democratic efforts Wednesday to protect the health reform law, winning passage of a spending bill that would defund the Affordable Care Act, eliminate a decades-old health research agency and slash the budget for other health programs. The subcommittee approved the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill on a mostly party-line vote of 8-6.”
“Another prominent religious college has filed suit against the Obama administration over a policy meant to ease women’s access to free birth control. The suit from Ill.-based Wheaton College — dubbed the ‘Notre Dame’ of Protestant higher education — states that the controversial policy violates the religious freedom of people who object to birth control or consider forms of it equal to abortion.”