C'mon, my Tea Party compatriots, you knew this was inevitable. If the SCOTUS manages to be sufficiently literate to actually read what Original ObamaCare actually says about subsidies only being provided for Regime-approved health insurance policies coercively purchased through "State [cartels]," and declares for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell next month - which I don't think they will any more than they struck down the Individual Mandate three years ago, and for the same damn reason - we all know what the Islamocommumedia Complex caterwaul will be: "Rightwing Republican extremist Supreme Court viciously takes away Americans' health care". And the rabid leftwingnut jihad will be on.....
Isn't it a relief that Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Kennedy will come to Senate Republicans' rescue once again?
- Me, four weeks ago
Okay, it was Roberts AND Kennedy.
Regardless, see, I TOLD YOU SO:
The Supreme Court has upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans.
The justices said in a 6-3 ruling Thursday that the subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance [slightly less un]affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.
Even though the 2010 healthcare law doesn't authorize those subsidies.
But no matter. There was never the slightest chance that the Roberts Court was going to gut ObamaCare by the federal subsidy avenue after they didn't strike down the unconstitutional Individual Mandate three years ago. His is a political court, which he ironically rationalizes by wanting to "keep the court out of politics". This manifests itself as standing back and letting the leftwingnut flash mobs decimate the Constitution and the rule of law, something the SCOTUS refuses to counter even with its usurped, unconstitutional "judicial review" power.
The rationale is right there in the Chief Justice's majority opinion:
Here, the statutory scheme compels the Court to reject petitioners’ interpretation because it would destabilize the individual insurance markets in any State with a Federal [cartel], and likely create the very “death spirals” that Congress designed the Act to avoid.
Not avoid, John, "create".
Under petitioners’ reading, the Act would not work in a State with a Federal [cartel]. As they see it, one of the Act’s three major reforms — the tax credits — would not apply. And a second major reform — the coverage requirement — would not apply in a meaningful way, because so many individuals would be exempt from the requirement without the tax credits. If petitioners are right, therefore, only one of the Act’s three major reforms would apply in States with a Federal [cartel].
The combination of no tax credits and an ineffective coverage requirement could well push a State’s individual insurance market into a death spiral. It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner. Congress made the guaranteed issue and community rating requirements applicable in every State in the Nation, but those requirements only work when combined with the coverage requirement and tax credits. It thus stands to reason that Congress meant for those provisions to apply in every State as well. Pp. 15–19.
A fine bit 'o reasoning - if John Roberts had been then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus when the Unaffordable Care Act was being schemed and plotted five years ago. This is a lawmaker's logic and lament, not that of a Supreme Court justice whose job it is to apply the law and the Constitution as written. And the plain, simple fact of the matter, as the petitioners pointed out, is that there is no provision for federal subsidies for policies obtained through healthcare.gov written anywhere in the UCA. Period. And Roberts' majority opinion doesn't even pretend that there is, hidden beneath any dipshit "penumbras" or any other made-up nonsense. The Chief Justice just puts on his Karnak The Magnificent costume....
....and gives the Obama-Pelosi-(G)Reid axis a mulligan.
To "keep the court out of politics," of course.
As you might imagine, and as is his Jeremiahesque role in life, Justice Scalia was scathingly having none of it:
The Court has not come close to presenting the compelling contextual case necessary to justify departing from the ordinary meaning of the terms of the law. Quite the contrary, context only underscores the outlandishness of the Court’s interpretation. Reading the Act as a whole leaves no doubt about the matter: “[Cartel] established by the State” means what it looks like it means. …
Statutory design and purpose matter only to the extent they help clarify an otherwise ambiguous provision. Could anyone maintain with a straight face that §36B is unclear? To mention just the highlights, the Court’s interpretation clashes with a statutory definition, renders words inoperative in at least seven separate provisions of the Act, overlooks the contrast between provisions that say “[Cartel]” and those that say “[Cartel] established by the State,” gives the same phrase one meaning for purposes of tax credits but an entirely different meaning for other purposes, and (let us not forget) contradicts the ordinary meaning of the words Congress used. On the other side of the ledger, the Court has come up with nothing more than a general provision that turns out to be controlled by a specific one, a handful of clauses that are consistent with either understanding of establishment by the State, and a resemblance between the tax-credit provision and the rest of the Tax Code. If that is all it takes to make something ambiguous, everything is ambiguous. …
Precisely.
The Court protests that without the tax credits, the number of people covered by the individual mandate shrinks, and without a broadly applicable individual mandate the guaranteed-issue and community-rating requirements “would destabilize the individual insurance market.” Ante, at 15. If true, these projections would show only that the statutory scheme contains a flaw; they would not show that the statute means the opposite of what it says. Moreover, it is a flaw that appeared as well in other parts of the Act. A different title established a long-term-care insurance program with guaranteed-issue and community-rating requirements, but without an individual mandate or subsidies. §§8001–8002, 124 Stat. 828–847 (2010). This program never came into effect “only because Congress, in response to actuarial analyses predicting that the [program] would be fiscally unsustainable, repealed the provision in 2013.” Halbig, 758 F. 3d, at 410. How could the Court say that Congress would never dream of combining guaranteed-issue and community rating requirements with a narrow individual mandate, when it combined those requirements with no individual mandate in the context of long-term-care insurance?....
Perhaps sensing the dismal failure of its efforts to show that “established by the State” means “established by the State or the Federal Government,” the Court tries to palm off the pertinent statutory phrase as “inartful drafting.” Ante, at 14. This Court, however, has no free-floating power “to rescue Congress from its drafting errors.” Lamie v. United States Trustee, 540 U. S. 526, 542 (2004) (internal quotation marks omitted).
No legal or constitutional power, anyway.
Only when it is patently obvious to a reasonable reader that a drafting mistake has occurred may a court correct the mistake. The occurrence of a misprint may be apparent from the face of the law, as it is where the [Una]ffordable Care Act “creates three separate Section 1563s.” Ante, at 14. But the Court does not pretend that there is any such indication of a drafting error on the face of §36B. The occurrence of a misprint may also be apparent because a provision decrees an absurd result — a consequence “so monstrous, that all mankind would, without hesitation, unite in rejecting the application.” Sturges, 4 Wheat., at 203. But §36B does not come remotely close to satisfying that demanding standard. It is entirely plausible that tax credits were restricted to State
[cartels] deliberately — for example, in order to encourage States to establish their own [cartels]. We therefore have no authority to dismiss the terms of the law as a drafting fumble.
Let us not forget that the term “[Cartel] established by the State” appears twice in §36B and five more times in other parts of the Act that mention tax credits. What are the odds, do you think, that the same slip of the pen occurred in seven separate places? No provision of the Act— none at all—contradicts the limitation of tax credits to State [cartels]....
Having transformed two major parts of the law, the Court today has turned its attention to a third. The Act that Congress passed makes tax credits available only on a["Cartel] established by the State.” This Court, however, concludes that this limitation would prevent the rest of the Act from working as well as hoped. So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare. [all emphases added]
Well, that last bit isn't actually true, Justice Scalia; Barack Obama rewrote the law to make tax credits available everywhere, and John Roberts didn't have the balls to call him on it.
As I predicted.
Exit question: Who do you think are the most relieved critters in Washington, D.C. today? And your first two guesses don't count.
UPDATE: While all 7,327 GOP presidential "hopefuls" obligatorily jumped on this "out-of-control act of judicial tyranny," I think Barack Obama delivered the postscript and brutal reality check:
His health care legacy secure, Barack Obama cast Thursday's Supreme Court ruling upholding ObamaCare as a historic and emphatic declaration that the law has now been "woven into the fabric of America."
"This is reality," Obama said in a celebratory statement in the Rose Garden. "You can see how it is working." [emphasis added]
Sorry, my Tea Party friends, but he's right.
This was, of course, true from the moment Mitt Romney conceded the 2012 election, and ObamaCare opponents resorted to the federal courts to, in effect, persuade one arm of the federal government to rein in the actions of the other two instead of just nullifying it. Now, it's too late; millions of Americans are dependent upon the Unaffordable Care Act, and any attempt to repeal it will be met with an electoral shitstorm of biblical proportions.
ObamaCare is, in short, a political third rail, right alongside Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Not that we shouldn't still try to get rid of all of them, but for all intents and purposes, it - and America - is over.
UPDATE II: From Gabe Malor:
One last thing. Because the Supreme Court has plucked ObamaCare out of the normal Chevron framework, the IRS cannot now rescind the regulation, claiming it has a new interpretation of the ambiguous statute. If you’re wondering why the Chief Justice and the others went so far out of bounds, that’s your answer: they don’t want a President [Walker] undoing the subsidies, which, applying Chevron deference, would have been perfectly reasonable to do. With ObamaCare, the Court is saying the IRS cannot change its mind because the Court has already made its mind up. [emphases added]
To which President Walker should say, to paraphrase Andy Jackson, "Chief Justice Roberts made his decision; now let him enforce it."
It would be the....constitutional thing to do.
Hey, I gotta get my pleasant dreams tonight from something.
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