Actually, Roberts’ argument was that it COULD be “reasonably characterized as a tax” and that "Congress’ choice of words…did not REQUIRE reading (it) as punishing unlawful conduct. It MAY also be read as imposing a tax on those who go without insurance.”
He went on: “…“[a] tax on going without health insurance is not like a capitation or other direct tax …”
His argument and the ruling as a whole did NOT find that the individual mandate “IS a tax”, only that, as written, it COULD be construed as one, and as a result, falls under Congress’ constitutional taxing authority.
As a flaming liberal myself, I think the mandate (and the entirety of the law) is constitutional on multiple grounds, including the regulation of interstate commerce and the promotion of the general welfare.
The health insurance industry (which I agree is at the root of the “health care crisis” in the U.S., along with the for-profit health care industry) operates across state lines and is therefore subject to federal regulation.
And federal intervention to address the issues of uninsured citizens lacking access to health care and spiraling health insurance/care costs due to the uninsured and/or corporate gouging certainly falls under the constitutional authority to “promote the general welfare.”
I don’t think the mandate overreaches federal authority in any way and I find myself wondering exactly what “liberal” principles you feel I am violating.
BTW, I support a single payer model, and am fairly confident that we will see one eventually, probably within my lifetime. In the meantime, the current reforms are a huge step in the right direction, imo.
Of course, I’m biased, having watched my husband die at 44 without health insurance or the ability to afford the on-going care he needed for a “pre-existing” genetic condition diagnosed late in life.
magellan01, it sounds like you feel that since the primary argument advanced by the Obama administration defending the mandate through the Commerce Clause was rejected, you believe that Roberts and the SCOTUS shouldn’t get to review the mandate based on the secondary argument of the ACA being a tax. Is that an accurate summation of your point?
Not exactly. My feeling is that the administration, after selling it—with great conviction and fervor—as a non-tax, should never have attempted its defense on those grounds. They were morally wrong to do so. And IF they did, and IF SCOTUS accepted that argument and deemed it a tax, then the law should be struck down because a tax is not what was voted on and passed. In fact, I maintain that it passed only because it was NOT a tax. So, what the people (congress) passed is not what SCOTUS says the law is. The old votes should be struck down and a new one held.
As far as the ruling itself, it’s cartoon absurd. It walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, so what do we have? Answer: a rocking chair. If it is a duck, then SCOTUS should not even be able to rule on it until it is in place and being paid.
That’s arguable, but all that would do is push back SCOTUS’ determination that the ACA was constitutional for two years. The Court would rule that it didn’t have jurisdiction and then uphold the mandate in 2014. What’s the point?
Not sure if anybody has said this already in this thread, but here it goes, in simple terms:
Defend the mandate?
Easy, the mandate is the thing that pays for everything else in the bill that consistently polls extremely well. Without the mandate, the popular reforms aren’t possible.
No, the mandate is what pays the insurance companies to keep their lobbyists and PR departments from tossing out any legislator who tries to make them irrelevant. Without the mandate, every other UHC scheme is still possible. This was mostly a pork barrel law to get health insurers more customers.
Medicaid expansion and forcing insurers to accept preexisting conditions were steps in the right direction. The mandate is what allowed the insurers to let those laws pass. I can’t imagine healthcare policy will look like this for very long. This seems like a transitional system at best. If it gets Americans to accept real UHC, I’m all for it. It could also cause a backlash against the idea as well, but I think once all those poor Republicans get a taste of it, they will clamor for more. Look at all the senior citizens in the Tea party: “The government can’t do anything right. Now get your hands off my Medicare!”
100% wrong. The bill could have been paid for the way pay for virtually anything else: taxes. But if you recall, Obama swore up and down that it was NOT a tax.
I think you misunderstand, which is pretty much par for the course for conservatives who seem to have amnesia since they proposed this exact same plan several years ago. Having everyone purchase insurance is what lets the system work. The premiums of those who are currently uninsured pay for the expansion of coverage. The mandate is a mechanism to encourage people to purchase insurance.
Stop pretending that you want to fund UHC through taxes.
You may want to read more carefully. 2ManyTacos said that the mandate was necessary. Here: (emphasis mine)
I corrected that untruth.
The fact is that we have a ton of stuff we fund, and do it through zero mandates. We do it through a different mechanism: taxes. Feel free to look it up.
Well duh. Of course we could fund UHC through taxes. The reason we didn’t is because conservatives insisted we use a market based approach instead. Of course that was before we had a black person as President. That changed everything.
It is possible to use for-profit insurance companies to achieve UHC, but only if everyone buys insurance. If they don’t, then we have the “free loader” problem . That is why the mandate is necessary.
You’re missing the point. The question isn’t whether the mandate is defensible by any justification. The question is whether it’s defensible under and consistent with liberal values. Obviously the aims of the ACA are a liberal gift basket, but does legislation which further liberal goals justify anti-liberal means?
Your post boils down to"well, the mandate is necessary, if we’re going to make sure everyone has health insurance because, you know, it’s mandated. The mandate is ONE mechanism by which to pay for broader and better health insurance. There is at least one other. One other so obvious that it funds virtually everything els we get as benefits from living in the U.S. and you appropriately referred to it with a “duh”.
So, by your own logic there is another mechanism by which broader and better health care could be paid for. Yet, you claim that the mandate is necessary.
Some time recently - maybe a year ago - I started noticing a few conservatives saying the ACA should be scrapped in favor of a single-payer system. Of course, the only reason the ACA exists in its current form is that more expansive options like single-payer were even less palatable to conservatives. If conservatives had been on board with that idea in 2009-10, it could have gone in that direction. So those criticisms were entirely disingenuous. They did everything they could to block the law, failed, and then tried to rewrite history.
There is never only one way to pay for something, but the mandate is a necessary part of the law as constituted. The law extends health care coverage to more sick people (via health insurance companies) and that has to be paid for somehow. I don’t think taxing people and turning that money over to health insurers would have worked - and certainly I don’t think it would have worked politically.
The mandate is designed to encourage individuals to buy health insurance so the cost of their health care will not be pushed off to everybody else. That “personal responsibility” idea is the reason conservatives concocted and backed this idea in the '90s. Making everybody pay for health care for the uninsured was unfair; making individuals contribute something was fair. So the ACA has a provision that says you need to have health insurance if you can afford it, otherwise you have to pay a penalty. Could it be paid for other ways? Yes. This was deemed the most workable and equitable way.
I think you are being disingenuous, but I’ll pretend this is a serious comment. The mandate is necessary for the current law which uses private, for-profit insurers. If there was a different form of UHC that was funded from the general fund, then a raise in taxes would be necessary and the mandate wouldn’t be needed. Is that really hard to understand?
Let’s say they are morally wrong, that the Obama administration knew it was a tax, but sold it as a penalty. They lied, basically, to get it passed. Why should that be struck down? The law works the same whether you believe it to be a tax or a penalty.
Consider this: they didn’t lie about what the content was. The bill, long as it may be, was available for each congressman to read. Please don’t bring up the misleading lie about Pelosi saying we had to pass it to see what was in there. The whole quote is less stupid than that one soundbite. The fact is the entire bill was available for them to read. So given that, the congressmen who feel tricked should have done a better job of reading.
I agree. With so much Republicans in the House, it would have been near impossible to get enough of them to agree to a new tax. But so what? The ACA doesn’t really work any differently 2 years ago when it was passed compared to now when it has been upheld. The “tax” epithet is irrelevant to the function of the law. They could have called it the Puppies and Kittens Act and it would still work the same way, and probably get more votes, but so what?
I don’t get your analogy. The “duck” in this case is the penalty, right? Because the SCOTUS declared it to be a tax, the “rocking chair”. But its just a label because they both work the same way. A more apt analogy would be that it walks and quacks like a duck, but its a mallard. Its still a duck, but its a specific kind of duck, more accurately a mallard instead of the all encompassing descriptor of “duck”
