“It’s unfortunate that Chief Justice Roberts joined the liberal justices to uphold the individual mandate as a tax. Yet as I understand the ruling, the opinion does very little to enlarge the federal government’s power and, in key respects, reinforced federalism limitations on federal power. According to SCOTUSBlog, while Chief Justice Roberts concluded the mandate is a tax, he also rejected the Commerce Clause arguments in favor of the mandate.”
“The Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health care law today in a splintered, complex opinion that gives Obama a major election-year victory. Basically. the justices said that the individual mandate — the requirement that most Americans buy health insurance or pay a fine — is constitutional as a tax.”
“If the health law withstands the Supreme Court challenge, two physician legislators in Congress want to make sure the Obama administration doesn’t get away with its attempt to rewrite the law to fit its larger agenda.”
“Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman’s most famous book was titled ‘Free To Choose,’ a treatise on the centrality of choice to a free economy. PPACA militates against choice. The individual mandate is not just a constitutional issue, it is fundamentally an economic issue. The mandate explains why the law remains unpopular, and why politicians who passed it are not using it as the centerpiece of their campaign.”
“Even if the Affordable Care Act survives its first Supreme Court test— a ruling is due as early as today — the lawsuits won’t end. Citizens have already filed challenges to what critics call the law’s ‘death panel’ and its impact on privacy rights, religious liberty and physician-owned hospitals. Still another potential lawsuit poses as great a threat to the law as the case now before the high court.”
“While it is too early to make a definitive connection, it appears that the regulation encourages young adults to switch from obtaining coverage on their own, where they will pay additional costs, to obtaining coverage as dependents, where parents and parents’ employers will foot the bill. The regulation hence simply shifts costs from one group of people (young adults) to another (their parents and parents’ employers). This sort of distortion contributes to increases in premiums that the Administration expects in response to the regulation.”
“The following are just four of the worst features of Obamacare; there are many other aspects of the law that would be damaging. And all of these features could remain threats to the strength of the economy and quality of American health care if the Court upholds the law or severs the unconstitutional provisions from the rest of the legislation. That is why Congress must stand ready to repeal the rest of Obamacare in the event that the Court does not invalidate the entire thing.”
“Logistically a company with only 30 full-time employees managing thousands of part-time employees sounds far-fetched. However, with this sort of perverse financial incentive, companies in many industries–-particularly those with low-skilled, low wage employees – will ‘do the math’ and hire part-time workers over full-time workers. While this may keep human resource departments busy, it will cause many businesses to miss out on some economies of scale, as they devote more time and effort to hiring and training part-time workers.”
“The Supreme Court’s decision on the 2010 healthcare law may result in what appears to be a fiscal windfall for the federal government. But it would be a grave mistake for lawmakers to react to illusory savings with real new spending. To illustrate this point, let’s look at a few of the possible Supreme Court rulings—and their projected fiscal consequences.”
“A new insider survey of 58 legal experts conducted after the oral arguments concluded found that most predict that the court will strike down the so-called individual mandate, a central provision within the law requiring that every American purchase a government-approved form of health insurance. The same expert survey was conducted before the hearings began, which found the opposite: Most thought the law would be upheld.”