And also,
"If you want to have ________________________ then you can pay the tax penalty"
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 19:47 (twelve years ago) link
oh wait, I just advocated a lot of excise taxes and they aren't regressive. There I go again.
*progressive*
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 19:48 (twelve years ago) link
I'm going to be hurt by the ACA: I use lower premium catastrophic insurance, ie insurance as it was known before the 1980s when it became low-copay comprehensive coverage. I was somewhat dubious about the mandate's constitutionality, but hopefully an adverse SC outcome will make single-payer or Medicare buy-in the necessary priority (as its been for progressive Dems for decades).
The ACA with the individual mandate struck down would be a disaster for the private health insurers. The big ones (UNH, AET, HUM, WLP, CI) were all down 1.5-2% by noon, but have largely recovered by the close. This suggests the equity market digested the hearings and thinks the likelihood of an adverse SC ruling hasn't changed much.
― I favor steatopygous buttocks and I do not dissimulate. (Sanpaku), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:11 (twelve years ago) link
Can't imagine the ACA surviving in any meaningful form without the mandate.
― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:14 (twelve years ago) link
― I favor steatopygous buttocks and I do not dissimulate. (Sanpaku), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 4:11 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
it probably suggests nothing
― recent thug (k3vin k.), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:17 (twelve years ago) link
stock market can't read kennedy's mind any better than anyone here
― iatee, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:19 (twelve years ago) link
guys I can read Kennedy's mind
― dayo, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:19 (twelve years ago) link
lithwick thinks today was political theater more so even than usual http://www.slate.com/articles/video/slate_v/2012/03/obamacare_individual_mandate_faces_hard_questions_at_the_supreme_court_.html
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:20 (twelve years ago) link
The size of Kennedy's brain:
http://supremecourt.c-span.org/images/Kennedy_flt.jpg
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:22 (twelve years ago) link
I just read this on The Volokh Conspiracy's comments section. Thoughts?
What they should have done was tax people for health care, then give refunds to people who buy insurance
Yes, that's the frustrating thing about this - had the Congress passed a 2% increase in the income tax and at the same time granted a credit in that amount for having health insurance, the results would be identical in practice and there would be no constitutional argument.
I'm not sure that it's too late though - if the mandate is struck down but deemed severable, something will have to give.
We would still have the constitutional argument, methinks.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:27 (twelve years ago) link
will be interesting to see what happens if the individual mandate is thrown out and obama is reelected
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:28 (twelve years ago) link
for the current individual mandate, to whom does the penalty money go to?
― dayo, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:29 (twelve years ago) link
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 4:27 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
you can think that
― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:30 (twelve years ago) link
course saying "all Congress had to do was pass a 2% income tax increase and at the same time create a health care tax credit" is a little like saying "all the llama had to do was ride a unicycle and at the same time juggle knives"
― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:31 (twelve years ago) link
― lag∞n, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 4:28 PM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i think prob nothing would really happen legislatively during obamas 2nd term due to gridlock and by the time you get to the next president youd have serious cost issues to deal with but obamacare will be too entrenched to just throw out
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:32 (twelve years ago) link
only solution: medicare for all!!
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:33 (twelve years ago) link
The highlight for me:
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: But you're -- but the given is that virtually everyone, absent some intervention from above, meaning that someone's life will be cut short in a fatal way, virtually everyone will use health care.
MR. CLEMENT: At some point, that's right, but all sorts of people will not, say, use health care in the next year, which is the relevant period for the insurance.
JUSTICE BREYER: But do you think you can, better than the actuaries or better than the members of Congress who worked on it, look at the 40 million people who are not insured and say which ones next year will or will not use, say, emergency care? Can you do that any better than if we knew that 40 million people were suffering, about to suffer a contagious disease, and only 10 million would get sick -
MR. CLEMENT: Of course not -
JUSTICE BREYER: -- and we don't know which?
MR. CLEMENT: Of course not, Justice Breyer, but the point is that once Congress decides it's going to regulate extant commerce, it is going to get all sorts of latitude to make the right judgments about actuarial predictions, which actuarial to rely on, which one not to rely on.
The question that's a proper question for this Court, though, is whether or not, for the first time ever in our history, Congress also has the power to compel people into commerce, because, it turns out, that would be a very efficient things for purposes of Congress's optimal regulation of that market.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:34 (twelve years ago) link
Breyer's singsong intonations are straight out of the sonorous tenured college professor playbook and it's quite annoying.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:35 (twelve years ago) link
Congress's optimal regulation of that market
Wow.
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:01 (twelve years ago) link
Whatever's left of me just died reading that.
"optimal"
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:02 (twelve years ago) link
As if "optimal" was void of political whim.
p sure he was being slightly ironical
― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:03 (twelve years ago) link
"Yesterday the Chief Justice said that it doesn’t make much sense to say that the mandate is separate from the penalty or the tax," Dellinger said. "He seemed yesterday to have accepted the government’s argument that there’s a real choice here. If you don’t want to have health insurance that you can pay the tax penalty."
I hope this is right. I think the key here is seeing it as a tax - because Congress has broad Constitutional powers to tax.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:06 (twelve years ago) link
And we should never limit those.
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:07 (twelve years ago) link
Well, you can limit them if you want, but it would take a Constitutional amendment.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:13 (twelve years ago) link
don aren't you like a libertarian or something
― recent thug (k3vin k.), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:15 (twelve years ago) link
What I mean is limit the scope of taxation Nate, which is what you could argue the SCOTUS would do here.
I'd rather us expand Medicare/Medicaid than expand the scope of taxation.
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:18 (twelve years ago) link
How is it expanding the scope of taxation? The existing scope is very broad:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause
― o. nate, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:22 (twelve years ago) link
Currently the federal government cannot tax people for not having health insurance, right?
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:27 (twelve years ago) link
That's the issue being decided. Based on my admittedly non-expert reading of the clause, I'd say they do have that power.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:28 (twelve years ago) link
I mean there's nothing in there about what you can and can't tax, as long as the taxes are applied uniformly to the States.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:30 (twelve years ago) link
which is why most of yesterday's argument revolved around "penalty" vs "tax."
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:31 (twelve years ago) link
Am I missing something then?
If SCOTUS agrees with the feds on this, expansion of taxing power will be validated.
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:32 (twelve years ago) link
Or maybe more succinctly, it will be ratified?
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:33 (twelve years ago) link
I don't really think the decision should rest on semantics though. Unless they can show there is a substantive difference between a penalty and a tax, I think the Court should uphold the law.
If SCOTUS agrees with the feds on this, expansion of taxing power will be validated
I think you're saying the Feds didn't have the power, because they didn't use it. I'm saying they had the power, but they didn't use it until now. I guess it's a matter of perspective. So I guess in your view, any qualitatively new type of tax would be unconstitutional?
― o. nate, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:35 (twelve years ago) link
The Obama administration isnt making that argument though; it's resting it in part on an interpretation of the Commerce Clause consistent with post-1937 (hell, McCullough vs Maryland) rulings.
xpost to dan
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:36 (twelve years ago) link
Yes, that's the impression I've been getting to. I admit to being a bit puzzled by that approach, but then again I'm not a Constitutional scholar.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:38 (twelve years ago) link
"too" not "to"
everyone's fave site the National Review just sent out some anti-abortion spam with oddly timed SCotUS bashing -
Dear Friend,
For 39 years, nine unelected men and women on the Supreme Court have played God with innocent human life.
They have invented laws that condemned to painful deaths without trial more than 56 million babies for the crime of being "inconvenient."
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling forced abortion-on-demand down our nation's throat.
― bnw, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:38 (twelve years ago) link
SCOTUS deep-throated the nation?
― dayo, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:39 (twelve years ago) link
"painful deaths without trial" oh god the unpacking to be done
― Nicholas Pokémon (silby), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:40 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not trying to make a constitutional argument here, so I probably screwed that up. The issue isn't whether or not the government can tax, it's the expansion of the tax system that riles me, I suppose.
Funny, I would imagine that many conservatives think that there is no difference between a penalty and a tax, unless it's a situation like this one.
xpost
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:40 (twelve years ago) link
i really don't get the 'mandate is unconstitutional' argument, unless you also think that social security and medicare are unconstitutional.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:43 (twelve years ago) link
neither contains any obligation to participate in a public market in a specific way
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:48 (twelve years ago) link
social security is not something you purchase
― You big bully, why are you hitting that little bully? (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:48 (twelve years ago) link
if we had a single-payer system, none of this would be in question
something else would probably be in question, but that's a given...
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:49 (twelve years ago) link
Here, don
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:49 (twelve years ago) link
― dandydonweiner, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 5:32 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
laws are presumed constitutional until found otherwise. congress has the power to tax in this manner, because it went and did that. two years later we're finding out whether it was constitutional
― recent thug (k3vin k.), Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:51 (twelve years ago) link