And my understanding is that Congress is the body that ultimately decides what’s severable anyways. The courts only make that decision when Congress fails to provide an answer. Severability was such a big deal in 2012 because everyone knew that the composition of Congress meant that whatever the court did was final.
The two go hand in hand. If Congress can sever it, so can the court. When people were claiming it was not severable, they were saying it was literally impossible to sever.
I think you’ve badly misunderstood some things, but I’m at a loss how to explain them more clearly. Good luck and merry Christmas.
Perhaps you can inform me of the fucking point of shortening the ACA exchange open enrollment period for those who WANT to buy health insurance.
It seems like the only fucking point of doing so is to minimize the number of fucking Americans who have fucking health insurance. Or it is a senseless jab against the former fucking President.
But I have not seen a fucking reason why this policy makes sense.
The purpose of the limited enrollment periods is to discourage people from waiting until they get sick or pregnant to sign up for health insurance. Prior to the ACA if you were buying individual (ie not thru your employer) health insurance you could sing up at any time, but any preexisting conditions were excluded from coverage for around 6-18 months. Most insurances would waive that exclusion period if you had coverage for a similar length of time prior to signing up. They were also allowed to charge subscribers higher premiums based on their medical history (or even outright refuse to sell them a policy at any price).
If it were not so tragic to wait for these people to go bankrupt, die, or simply kick them to the curb like health care exiles, I would laugh at this rationalization.
The repeal of the mandate will probably raise prices in the exchanges, but they should survive just fine due to heavy subsidization and the fact that people just like to buy health insurance when they can. Obama was right the first time, “I don’t think you need to force people to buy health insurance.”
Yes, it’s true that the individual mandate was considered necesssary to avoid a death spiral, but the structure of ACA makes that very unlikely. And the mandate was weak to begin with and wasn’t even really a mandate.
I was just using that phrase in the sense that the bounds and norms of reconciliation have been expanded so much by the GOP that the Dems will resort to using it the next time they have Senate control, especially now that the presumption going forward is that massive legislative goals must be enacted via reconciliation. I mean, the political tumult surrounding the ACA has proven that policy compromise is worthless and that it doesn’t yield any political benefits; moreover, everybody loves expanded Medicaid, so it’ll be far easier to just dramatically expand that program - such that it’ll cover all Americans by default, or that all Americans could buy into it - via reconciliation, even if that expansion might only be temporary for budgetary reasons.
Just want to point out the Bricker that, after the resurrection, God actually killed people who didn’t contribute to help others. That’s forcing people to do something. Does that mean God’s plan was bad?
This is a tenet of conservatism, not an absolute truth. There are good things that people won’t pay for. In fact, this is quite common, because people are encouraged by our system to be selfish. The worth of something is not based on how it will help the buyer, but how it will help society.
I mean, that’s basically the difference between good and evil. Good cares about others. Evil cares only about yourself. Run through what the Bible says is wrong. It’s almost always something that hurts others. And the few points where it’s not, that’s where we have arguments.
Don’t get me wrong. The ACA isn’t the greatest, but this is largely because it still allows for ridiculous deductibles, and didn’t offset that with subsidies. The only full solution will likely be government subsidized healthcare, which will ironically cost everyone less–even the richest people.
What it won’t do is let them become rich by ripping off people, since the people will have the full force of the government to stop them. It’s telling that costs are so much lower in every other country where the government can fight for the people.
Once again, greed is why things suck. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
Problem is, prices are already too high. My sister has horrible insurance, but getting the same thing costs more on the exchanges.
What we were hoping to do is drive the prices down by there being more people in the pool. The reason it isn’t is how toothless the mandate was already, because Republicans got it shut down on a technicality, rather than caring about the whole system.
Limited government: it’s not about the people limiting the government, which is good. It’s about making sure the government isn’t a threat to the biggest businesses. Keep the government weak, so the people are weak against those who would want to exploit them.
The people keeping the government in balance with businesses would be the ideal.
If forced unity is what it takes for government to work, I don’t think you’ll find too many buyers. The public has never supported the individual mandate, so ACA either works without it or it doesn’t. “I want stuff to be cheaper” is not a legitimate reason to force people into a market.
It’s not “I want stuff to be cheaper” it’s “I want insurance companies forced to cover pre-existing conditions”, and a logical way to keep abuse of the system down is to force participation. Would you be OK with a tax-credit for having insurance instead of a fine for not having it?
Sure. No one’s taxes actually go up. It’s a carrot instead of a stick. Also, you avoid abuse of the system with limited enrollment periods. Besides which, if you want a mandate, you have to have an actual mandate. The mandate as enforced was at best only going to trick a few into the market who otherwise wouldn’t be there. The IRS by law couldn’t collect it except by docking refunds and very angry letters, and exemptions were easy to come by. The Democrats also undermined it by letting the youngest and healthiest consumers stay on their parents’ insurance. That made the exchange pools older.
No, you are wrong. The reason healthy people don’t buy into Obamacare isn’t just because they’re young and stupid. Its because they are being asked to pay way more than their actuarial risks would justify. Its taxing the young and healthy (and frequently poor) to pay for the old. Obamacare is a great idea in principle but horrible in execution, mostly because Obama had to get a bunch of shitty Democrats on board.
Its time to just go with medicare for all if we can manage a large enough majority to pull it off. Let the private market and Medicaid fill the gaps.
They didn’t have the votes. They figured better a shitty law than no law at all. Sort of like the recent Republican tax bill. Except I expect that the Democrats will cooperate in fixing the problems with the tax bill because the problems hurt mostly blue state voters.
ETA: the problems with Obamacare hurt lots of red state voters but red state voters but you can repeal obamacare, you can’t repeal the tax code.
Er… you do know that insurance companies charge more for family plans than for individual plans, right? As in, “the entire family is in the pool, with more money coming in because the kids are also in the pool”?
Why can’t you shove medicare for all through on the Byrd rule? Just throw in a shitload of anti-red state “revenue raisers” to balance shit out past year ten and then repeal the “revenue raisers” under normal order.
National defense is no good?
That was before the Republicans decided that the fiscally catastrophic death spiral was the way to go. Party before country y’all.
Agreed. I don’t believe there has been a single instance of anyone being prosecuted for failure to pay the mandate.