Appeals Court Seems Skeptical About Constitutionality of Obamacare Mandate
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Source: New York Times
NEW ORLEANS A panel of federal appeals court judges on Tuesday sounded likely to uphold a lower-court ruling that a central provision of the Affordable Care Act the requirement that most people have health insurance is unconstitutional. But it was harder to discern how the court might come down on a much bigger question: whether the rest of the sprawling health law must fall if the insurance mandate does.
In 90 minutes of oral arguments on whether a federal district judge in Texas was correct in striking down the Affordable Care Act in December, two appellate judges appointed by Republican presidents peppered lawyers with blunt questions while the third judge, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, remained silent.
The two Republican appointees, Jennifer Walker Elrod, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007, and Kurt Engelhardt, appointed by President Trump in 2018, seemed particularly skeptical of the Democratic defendants argument that Congress had fully intended to keep the rest of the law when it eliminated the penalty for going without insurance as part of its 2017 tax overhaul.
The arguments in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit were a stark reminder of the enormous stakes of the case, not only for millions of people who gained health insurance through the law but for the political futures of Mr. Trump and other candidates in the 2020 elections.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/appeals-court-seems-skeptical-about-constitutionality-of-obamacare-mandate/ar-AAE48fU?li=BBnb7Kz
Sounds like the Republicans want to commit murder/suicide.
klook
(12,134 posts)Is that unconstitutional too?
Please proceed, Rethugs.
alwaysinasnit
(5,037 posts)mandated to have health insurance????
elleng
(130,156 posts)Sounds like judges recognize difficult issues, which is good.
bucolic_frolic
(42,676 posts)GOP had majoriy, they could have passed anything.
These judges are too big for their britches. Constitutionality is for the High Court to decide.
NoMoreRepugs
(9,260 posts)Mr.Bill
(24,104 posts)John McCain got in the way.
progree
(10,864 posts)Mr.Bill
(24,104 posts)that taking health insurance away from tens of millions of people is a good idea in an election year?
pazzyanne
(6,518 posts)Once again they are trying to kill the ACA without at back up plan. Don't hold you breath until they come up with something. They have had plenty of opportunity to come up with a viable heath insurance and so far it has been a fail.
Mr.Bill
(24,104 posts)of coming up with a replacement health insurance program. If they had their way there would be no Medicare, Medicaid or VA.
pazzyanne
(6,518 posts)Skittles
(152,965 posts)they do not care who it hurts
groundloop
(11,488 posts)Honest to God, the repubs have tried to kill Obamacare in the courts so many times I can't remember which court decided what part of the law.
And this shit is getting personal. I'd like to retire in the next year but am not old enough for Medicare yet and was planning on using ACA to fill the gap. These motherfuckers don't give a damn about who they hurt, just that they erase any good that Democrats have done.
progree
(10,864 posts)So I guess the answer is that the Supreme Court didn't rule on the constitutionality of the mandate, but rather on the constitutionality of the penalty, err tax. So now that no tax is being imposed, but the mandate still exists, even though there is no penalty, err tax, ...
I dunno, just trying to put the pieces together...
Well, gee, it seems to be working without the mandate so far -- we're halfway into 2019, the first year without the penalty (2018 was still a penalty year -- https://www.aarp.org/health/health-insurance/info-2018/penalty-no-health-insurance-2018-fd.html )
That said, I acknowledge that it's not working for people who need it but can't afford it (thanks mostly to Repuke sabotage).
From the excerpt in the OP:
Oh, I dunno, should courts be mind-reading? Myself I think it would be grand if the ACA worked without the penalty. I suspect some who voted to get rid of the penalty felt that it was wrong to penalize people who couldn't afford it, but otherwise were OK with the ACA as long as it was optional.
Getting rid of the penalty was also part of a huge tax overhaul bill, and that a majority of congress people voted for the bill does not mean that a majority were supportive of every provision it it.
progree
(10,864 posts)Legal scholars including those who oppose the ACA consider the Texas case dubious ((Texas v. United States, the case being argued now at the Appeals Court -Progree)).
In a brief filed with the appeals court, legal scholars from both sides of the fight over the ACA agreed that the Texas lawsuit's underlying claim makes no sense.
In passing the tax bill that eliminated the ACA's tax penalty but nothing else, Congress "made the judgment that it wanted the insurance reforms and the rest of the ACA to remain even in the absence of an enforceable insurance mandate," wrote law professors Jonathan Adler, Nicholas Bagley, Abbe Gluck and Ilya Somin. Bagley and Gluck are supporters of the ACA; Adler and Somin have argued against it in earlier suits. "Congress itself not a court eliminated enforcement of the provision in question and left the rest of the statute standing. So congressional intent is clear."
From the excerpt in the OP:
Myself I think it would be grand if the ACA worked without the penalty. I suspect some who voted to get rid of the penalty felt that it was wrong to penalize people who couldn't afford it, but otherwise were OK with the ACA as long as it was optional.
Getting rid of the penalty was also part of a huge tax overhaul bill, and that a majority of congress people voted for the bill does not mean that a majority were supportive of every provision it it.
DonViejo
(60,536 posts)The consensus of Forum Hosts agrees this is analysis/opinion about how the court might rule - not yet important news of national interest. Please post the article in the General Discussions Forum.