It’s a weakly-reasoned opinion that, even if affirmed, will be affirmed on other grounds. Even non-lawyers should be able to see that the whole thing rests on an unsupported footnote (note 7), invalid legal reasoning (relying on the lack of cases saying something rather than cases negating the proposition or reasoning for why the proposition is false), and misstatement of precedent (see p. 24 regarding what the necessary and proper clause requires).
But it doesn’t really matter what any of the district courts say about the law, except for public relations purposes. Having at least one court say this challenge is legitimate is important for the cause of repeal.
I have to add that if I was like Machiavelli I would be glad to see this current plan fail just to see the inevitable happen in 15 or 20 years, we will soon find that indeed the US health care prices are a sick bubble that when it bursts with no alternative plan in place, it will make the hard election loss of the Democrats in 2010 to be a firecracker compared to a bomb the Republicans will suffer on the elections following the bubble burst.
There’s been quite a bit of discussion of this issue on various legal blogs. Basically, many complex pieces of legislation contain a “severability clause” which states that if one piece is found unconstitutional, the rest still applies. The HRC legislation does NOT contain such a clause. Apparently, one was proposed, but was not approved.
So, yes, if the individual mandate is struck down, pretty much the whole thing goes down.
Severance does not turn on the presence or absence of such a clause, except insofar as the presence or absence is indicative of Congressional intent. Congress probably intended for parts of the Act to rely on the individual mandate, but not all of it. Consequently, not all of the Act will be stricken if the mandate is found unconstitutional.
Do you have a link for those numbers, and the context of the polls cited, or am I just supposed to take your word for it, because as “Saint” Ronnie said, trust, but verify.
well, if you are working under the table then presumably you aren’t paying any sort of taxes at all. The point isn’t that there are ways to break the law and skirt the tax, the point is that the tax applies to everyone.
It is not strange, you will also be satisfied if the high cost of health care would be hidden from you when you have a good full time job.
IMHO most of that satisfaction would be gone if we all realized that that high cost means that companies or businesses would be reluctant to hire the number of people necessary to complete a task properly, leading to less output.
How the hell is that possible? 15% of the public didn’t even have insurance. Are you saying that everyone with insurance was happy with their health care before Obamacare was passed? Do you have a cite?
Yeah, sure, the fucking Shah of Iran can come here and get incredible medical care but the average level of health care received in the USA is worse. Not because the level of health care is lower than in other countries but because the access is so much worse.
You do not have to sign up for Medicare. You can not until you are 65 ,but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. My brother never signed up for it and he died at 68.
I think the country would have been fine with single payer universal health care if Obama got the economy buzzing along. I think a lot of people were wondinering why Obama was fucking around with health care when unemployment was at 10%
Well, the things is I did see very similar numbers coming from the ones opposing reform in previous discussions, so I’m only doing some preemptive points. But yeah, I agree; bring on the cites, because as I also remember, in the previous discussions some of those cites were laughable.
