Here’s some fun and fairly new development in the case:
WaPo’s Greg Sargent wrote:
“The first Senate version of the health law to be passed in 2009–by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee–explicitly stated that subsidies would go to people on the federally-established exchange. A committee memo describing the bill circulated at the time spelled this out with total clarity.”
Obviously the final version of the bill didn’t have this language. Here’s what the Supreme Court thinks of this kind of thing:
“Where Congress includes limiting language in an earlier version of a bill but deletes it prior to enactment, it may be presumed that the limitation was not intended,”
Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in Russello v. U.S. (1983).
“Few principles of statutory construction are more compelling than the proposition that Congress does not intend sub silentio to enact statutory language that it has earlier discarded in favor of other language.”
Justice John Paul Stevens in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca (1987)
Assuming you are referring to the Medicaid Expansion when you refer to “(t)hat one” then I would absolutely disagree.
Clearly the federal government cannot force states to expand Medicaid. Medicaid has long been a joint federal-state program but authority clearly lies with the states to control their own spending.
The mandatory Medicaid Expansion under the PPACA would, after several years of the feds paying 100% of the expansion, eventually require states to spend money. The federal government does not have the authority to require states to spend like that. They can offer enticements to the states to implement such programs, but cannot force them to do so.
The surprise, if there is one, of SCOTUS striking down such expansion is that the grounds on which they did so by saying the carrot-and-stick approach is ok, but he stick cannot be TOO big. IANAL, but I am not aware of the high court ever before striking down a law on such grounds. It presents a possible limit to future programs.
However I am also not aware of any other federal program that proposed to remove all federal funding for a pre-existing fed-state partnership due to a state’s refusal to expand the parameters of such a program.
Using the word “clearly” is handwaving. And taking a case of the SCOTUS majority throwing the minority a bone is hardly something to point to as a principle that delegitimizes the entire thing. The core was upheld and the law is now in effect - the only losers are the people in the states whose governors refused it, in their own attempt to resist it by any means possible.
ACA is the Republicans’ own idea, remember? They only decided to *oppose *their own idea when Obama adopted it, and for that reason alone. They have no other idea at all to offer, because that *was *their only idea. That reflexive oppositionism isn’t legitimate in any way, it isn’t responsible, it isn’t adult, it isn’t even adolescent, it’s just a childish series of tantrums.
The individual mandate is the core? Not the expansion of health care to people too poor to afford it? What is that, just a side benefit of the law? Interesting if this is really your thinking, that the core of the law isn’t to expand insurance coverage to the poor, but to force the middle class to buy health insurance. Which BTW, was also ruled illegal. Paying the tax brings an individual into full compliance with the law. Oh, and the IRS can’t collect the tax except by docking refunds, so you don’t even really have to pay the tax either. Some core. You’re better off sticking with the expansion coverage as the core.
They opposed the idea before Obama adopted it. Remember that period from 2002-2006 when Republicans were in complete control of Congress and didn’t pass their version of health care? That’s because by then there was too much opposition to that old version of health care, plus constitutional concerns with the individual mandate had cropped up in the think tanks.
Which is beside the point: no Republican plan would have raised taxes or been 2000 pages long. ACA takes a kernel of a Republican idea and expands it into a bureaucratic monster.
Anyone who had been paying even minimal attention to what the law actually is would know the answer to that. The mandate is what makes the rest possible. Without it, no, you don’t have coverage increases.
It’s incredible that you need that explained to you. Try changing the channel sometime.
Or they never seriously intended to do anything other than what their corporate sponsors told them to.
Remember the period when they kept chanting “repeal and replace” without having anything to replace it with? That was from 2009 to the present day, and continuing.
Until there is a Republican plan, we’ll never know, will we?
The mandate has zilch to do with Medicaid. No one is required to take Medicaid, because if you qualify for Medicaid, you’re exempt from the mandate in the first place.
It’s incredible that you need that explained to you. Try changing the channel sometime.(See what I did? I appropriated your own words to save time.)
As expected the losing sides have appealed in both Halbig v. Burwell and King v. Burwell.
The Obama administration has appealed for an en banc rehearing in the Halbig v. Burwell case. See the petition here. The Court has already requested a response from the Halbig side. The administration essentially restates its arguments, though reserving its argument about standing to a mere footnote.
Meanwhile the appellant in King v Burwell has filed directly for a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court. See the petition here. The appellants expanded upon their statements about legislative history, appearing to address issues raised at the Fourth Circuit including quoting the now infamous statements from the Gruber presentation at Noblis which made the rounds on video.
Arguably the petition for cert had a somewhat easier argument to make given the split at the lower court level. Structurally the appellants attempt to show where the two decisions reached common ground and then emphasize the need for urgent review given the broad impact of the IRS rule and concerns over how the lower courts’ rulings should be applied.
IIRC, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that heard the Halbig case has a special sort of jurisdiction over certain matters of interpretation of rulemaking of government agencies and is not strictly limited to geographical jurisdiction.
The petition for writ of cert in the King case does make one argument that might push SCOTUS to go ahead and take that case rather than wait for an en banc ruling on the *Halbig *case - granting this writ is likely the only means by which SCOTUS would hear the case in the coming year. Time is ticking and there is a lot at stake in clarifying the matter.
Terr, that’s a warning and you should know better than that. Post, not the poster.
And, for the general population: the sniping will stop now. Any more, no matter how small, will earn a warning. I don’t care that it’s a hot and sensitive topic. You will behave like adults in Great Debates.
Resurrecting this thread due to news today: the DC Circuit Court of Appeals will re-hear this decision, which will likely go in favor of ACA supporters.
It was expected that they would rehear the decision. What was not expected is that the ruling of the three-judge panel was invalidated; it essentially didn’t happen. I’ve read that this means the Supreme Court is less likely to take up the dispute after the DC Circuit makes its ruling.
The decision to re-hear a case en banc and re-issue an opinion always means the panel opinion is withdrawn. The panel speaks for the court. Now the court is going to speak for the court.
The winning side from the DC Circuit’s panel opinion was urging the DC Circuit to NOT re-hear the case en banc. This is, I would venture to say, the position taken by virtually any party who wins a federal circuit panel decision.
The losing side from the DC Circuit’s panel opinion was urging the DC Circuit TO re-hear the case en banc. This is, I would venture to say, the position taken by many parties who have lost.
An automatic consequence of the decision to re-hear the case is that the panel opinion is withdrawn.
You said, “It was expected that they would rehear the decision. What was not expected is that the ruling of the three-judge panel was invalidated; it essentially didn’t happen.”
One of those two statements isn’t true, unless you’re changing the person or party who was ‘expecting’ in between sentences.
Anyone who expected the DC Circuit to rehear the case also expected the ruling of the three-judge panel to be invalidated as though it essentially didn’t happen. Anyone who did NOT expect the DC Circuit to re-hear the case could, I suppose, be said to have “not expected” the panel decision to be withdrawn. But even such a person would agree that his “not expectation” arose from his belief that the en banc court would not re-hear, not out of some belief that even if they re-heard it, the original panel decision would somehow remain in effect.