# waiting \[for Supreme Court decision on health care law\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 18, 2012, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510 "2012-06-18T13:51:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/201 "2012-06-26T18:15:29Z")
> [@2ManyTacos](#): > > [Granted, this is an opinion article, but it illustrates my POV again.](http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77806.html) > _Some observers, such as Akhil Reed Amar, a leading legal scholar who has devoted his career to a close read of the Constitution, have said that their life’s work would be called into question if the court strikes down the law. Commenting to Ezra Klein at The Washington Post about the impending ruling, Amar said **“if they decide it by 5-4, then yes, it’s disheartening to me, because my life was a fraud.” It shows, he said that the law doesn’t really matter. “What mattered,” Amar said, “was politics, money, party and party loyalty.”** _ Maybe whomever claimed that Akhil Reed Amar is a “leading” legal scholar should readdress their opinion of him. Amar devoted his career to a “close read” of the Constitution but doesn’t seem to understand the specific issues before the court. How dare the USSC disappoint Amar. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/202 "2012-06-26T18:35:26Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > I didn’t know that it was possible to buy a lifetime healthcare policy that never changes it’s rates. > > There are policys being renewed every day. Rates go up, coverage increases, rates go up again, coverage goes down, rates go up again, the federal government requires that everyone be covered for everything and insurance companies will no longer be needed. Everything is covered and the taxpayers will pay for it. If you want extra services, private room, clean bone saw, extra-strength pain killers, you can buy additional coverage. I don’t think you understand your own argument. Health insurance policies are written on an annual basis. That means nothing that happens in 2014 has anything to do with what happens today. Things that happen in 2014 affect the cost of policies that run through 2014, which don’t yet exist and won’t until 2013. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/203 "2012-06-26T19:05:38Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I don’t think you understand your own argument. Health insurance policies are written on an annual basis. That means nothing that happens in 2014 has anything to do with what happens today. Things that happen in 2014 affect the cost of policies that run through 2014, which don’t yet exist and won’t until 2013. Policies renewals are being written every day and the renewal rates are higher than the previous rates. You’re only locked in for a specific time frame. As an example, demanding that insurance companies begin to pay for “all” birth control needs (or whatever medical proccedure you chose) for “every” policy holder results in increased payouts for the company. Payouts that may not have been included in every policy they issued. Every future policy will increased to cover the additional costs. The State doesn’t set the rates. If insurance companies overestimate the future cost of medical care and that estimate just happens to cover the estimated costs of Obamacare, what can you do about it? Switch to another company that is also aware that their costs are going to be forced upward by government demands for coverage? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/204 "2012-06-26T19:35:05Z")
You are posting gibberish, so let me see if I can make sense of it. Are you saying that insurance companies will start charging 2014-factored rates right now? If so, what will prevent their customers from switching to competitors who own calendars? ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/205 "2012-06-26T20:20:02Z")
> [@2ManyTacos](#): > > The individual mandate was the last way to ensure nearly universal coverage while still keeping health care grounded in private insurance. Taking it away will effectively guarantee that an even more left-wing approach - single-payer or a public option - will rise up to take its place. > … > Seriously, the US is going to inevitably get universal health care _eventually,_ and in the event of an ACA-takedown single-payer or a public option will be the ONLY viable ways to get there. That’s what kind of pathetic about conservatives. All of the things they fought against were inevitable: slavery, voting disenfranchisement, and Jim Crow were all going to end eventually, conservatives just prolonged them. Gay Marriage will be legal in a few years and no one will remember what the fuss was all about. Eventually we will have decent sex education in schools and the rates of pregnancy and STDs will fall, and there’ll be UHC with better results and lower costs than now. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/206 "2012-06-26T20:28:37Z")
> [@2ManyTacos](#): > > [Granted, this is an opinion article, but it illustrates my POV again.](http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77806.html) > _Some observers, such as Akhil Reed Amar, a leading legal scholar who has devoted his career to a close read of the Constitution, have said that their life’s work would be called into question if the court strikes down the law. Commenting to Ezra Klein at The Washington Post about the impending ruling, Amar said **“if they decide it by 5-4, then yes, it’s disheartening to me, because my life was a fraud.” It shows, he said that the law doesn’t really matter. “What mattered,” Amar said, “was politics, money, party and party loyalty.”** _ The law didn’t matter when the Court handed down Roe v Wade. The Court said that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to have an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. You may think that’s wise, but can you really say the Constitution says it? No. But you thought that was just fine. ---
**Author:** ![yanceylebeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yanceylebeef/32/12290_2.png) [@yanceylebeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yanceylebeef)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/207 "2012-06-26T20:45:36Z")
An interesting and quick read about the decision, and what Mondays outburst from Justice Scalia might actually mean over at [TPM](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/06/ive_wondered_too.php?ref=fpblg). ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/208 "2012-06-26T21:33:26Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Yes, people like government programs. But the history of Europe which had far more government involvement in day to day life for the past 40 years has shown a trend to some scaling back of state socialism. It’s not because individual programs that have been cut didn’t have people who supported them, but because society as a whole realized the downsides of too much government. While this is an argument worthy of debate, I can’t imagine that the UK or France, to mention a couple of examples, will ever scrap their HC delivery systems in favor of a US-style model. Moreover, I don’t think anything like the Tea Party exists in similar strength in any of the more prosperous nations of Europe. Their conservatives generally don’t want to go back to free market health care because it’s inefficient in terms of overall costs and outcomes. Tea Party conservatives, by and large, don’t _care_ if it’s efficient or not, they favor the free market model on ideological principle. They’ll have to cut something, but they won’t be cutting HC spending, except perhaps around the edges. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/209 "2012-06-26T22:11:27Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > My understanding is premiums would go up around 25-30% if there was no individual mandate but the rest of the law remained valid. This is because you would assume the prohibition on lifetime maximums, excluding people for preexisting conditions and et cetera would still remain and without a mandatory opt in of all young healthy people the genuine costs of insurance go up. Almost always, your consumption of health care correlates with your age. Chronic conditions kick in when you are in middle age, which is when you are also more likely to have a spouse and/or children who depend on you, or more specifically, on your employer, for their healthcare. But in today’s world, middle age is often when you become markedly less attractive to employers, and certainly less attractive to insurers should you find yourself in the market for a new policy. Anyone who would resent the individual mandate because of their current youth and excellent health should think of it as supporting a system that they may really, really need in thirty or forty years. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/210 "2012-06-26T22:42:52Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > My understanding is premiums would go up around 25-30% if there was no individual mandate but the rest of the law remained valid. This is because you would assume the prohibition on lifetime maximums, excluding people for preexisting conditions and et cetera would still remain and without a mandatory opt in of all young healthy people the genuine costs of insurance go up. I don’t think there is anything in the law that would prevent insurers from implementing any premium increases that are based on increased cost. I have heard closer to 15-20%. However premiums go up 30% a year anyway. Where I work the premiums have increased by 30% or more every year the last 3 years. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/211 "2012-06-26T22:55:57Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > You are posting gibberish, so let me see if I can make sense of it. > > Are you saying that insurance companies will start charging 2014-factored rates right now? If so, what will prevent their customers from switching to competitors who own calendars? I’m saying that rates will go up to cover the expected increased payouts. The problem with the Obamacare edicts is that all of the insurance companies in your State will be looking at approx. the same increases along the same timelines. Every company’s product will be higher. You may find a competitor that is cheaper than your current company but their rates will also be higher than they are today. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2012, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/212 "2012-06-26T23:30:24Z")
Nobody is arguing that rates won’t go up. The specific claim being debated is whether they will go up before 2014. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/213 "2012-06-27T00:33:19Z")
Charging 2014 rates in 2012 seems about like charging $5 in gas a few months ago when everyone thought it would go up to $5, any gas station that did it would be slaughtered by the all the stations still charging the then price of $3.85ish. It may be expensive in 2014, but short of collusion, or collusion like behavior, insurance companies will have to wait till 2014 or get slaughtered in the market, and that’s assuming they wouldn’t be state laws, which **NRATB** seems to have cited that prolly would be. However let’s say they do somehow charge 2014 rates in 2012 without violating the law. Maybe Merlin has Blue Cross Blue Shield stock, and decides to make magic happen. Jacking up the price on an already expensive and vital product, when it doesn’t need to be jacked up yet would be a good way to piss everyone off, and make UHC oh so much easier. Go ahead insurance companies, jack up the price. Write your greedy, inferior, asses out of history that much faster. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/214 "2012-06-27T02:31:29Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Nobody is arguing that rates won’t go up. The specific claim being debated is whether they will go up before 2014. The rates are going up now. The rates will go even higher as more and more of the Obamacare schemes are implimented. All of the insurance companies will face the same regulations and the same increased government mandated costs. The insurance companies have to raise rates to cover costs or they will go bankrupt. The rates will rise even faster after 2014. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/215 "2012-06-27T04:40:05Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > The rates are going up now. The rates will go even higher as more and more of the Obamacare schemes are implimented. All of the insurance companies will face the same regulations and the same increased government mandated costs. > > The insurance companies have to raise rates to cover costs or they will go bankrupt. The rates will rise even faster after 2014. Oddly enough UHC countries cover everyone, while being cheaper, and more effective overall. Fancy that. I wonder how much private insurance hurts the price of American trade? Yeah keep rising those prices, show how fucked up private insurance is. It can’t compete with UHC. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/216 "2012-06-27T14:09:38Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > The rates are going up now. The rates will go even higher as more and more of the Obamacare schemes are implimented. All of the insurance companies will face the same regulations and the same increased government mandated costs. > > The insurance companies have to raise rates to cover costs or they will go bankrupt. The rates will rise even faster after 2014. Sure, they’re going up now. They’ve been going up for decades because of the rising cost of medical services. Again, you seem to have lost track of the claim being debated: [QUOTE=Fear Itself] [QUOTE=John Mace] It can’t play out until 2014, because the ban on preexisting conditions and lifetime limits don’t kick in until then. [/QUOTE] But that doesn’t mean the insurance companies can’t start jacking up the rates in anticipation. Then we’ll see just how popular those elements of the legislation are when people have to actually pay for them. [/QUOTE] If you have some evidence that any current rate hikes are the result of “Obamacare schemes being impl[e]mented”, feel free to share. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/217 "2012-06-27T14:13:00Z")
> [@2ManyTacos](#): > > [Granted, this is an opinion article, but it illustrates my POV again.](http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77806.html) > _Some observers, such as Akhil Reed Amar, a leading legal scholar who has devoted his career to a close read of the Constitution, have said that their life’s work would be called into question if the court strikes down the law. Commenting to Ezra Klein at The Washington Post about the impending ruling, Amar said **“if they decide it by 5-4, then yes, it’s disheartening to me, because my life was a fraud.” It shows, he said that the law doesn’t really matter. “What mattered,” Amar said, “was politics, money, party and party loyalty.”** _ What a crock. Because it’s 5-4? What about the 5-4 decision this week saying that you can’t give life sentences to child murderers? Is that just political because it was 5-4? Amar should grow up. He’s playing the cynical game where he awards his side with the most honorable motives and the other with the worst. It’s unfair. You lose debates sometimes, Amar. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/218 "2012-06-27T14:46:56Z")
I don’t think they can charge 2014 rates now. As I understand it, if they don’t spend at least 80% of the premiums on actual healthcare they will have to refund the difference. So the most they can charge is enough to cover the cost of providing actual care, plus 25% more (20% of the total) to cover overhead and profits. I don’t think they can factor predicted costs for 1 1/2 years from now into that. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/219 "2012-06-27T14:56:35Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > The law didn’t matter when the Court handed down Roe v Wade. The Court said that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to have an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. You may think that’s wise, but can you really say the Constitution says it? > > No. > > But you thought that was just fine. Straw man. _Roe_ was an attempt to standardize abortion law in an era when some states were legalizing abortion and others were keeping it criminal, and a lot of us have been less than thrilled with that sort of policy-driven thinking, and the mendacity of claiming to find “penumbras” in the Constitution, even if we sympathize with the goal (of consistency across state lines + individual liberty). (And I was in the womb when _Roe_ was handed down, and I was a right-to-lifer for a long time, so I’m insulted that you presume to know what I “thought.”) The fact is, the opponents of PPACA are trying to get the court to legislate new common-law constitutional law, again, and as in _Roe,_ undermine legislative authority. Only now, instead of overruling fractious state legislatures potentially going in opposite directions on abortion; it would be overruling Congress, so fractious state legislatures can go in different directions on health insurance. It’s not trying to override a patchwork of inconsistent criminal law; it’s creating inconsistency where there is no inconsistent body of criminal law, just for policy reasons. But hey, let’s pretend we’re Thurgood Marshall, and legislating from the bench is hunky-dory: Standardizing abortion law looked like a small thing in practice, and perhaps was a reasonable policy, considering what a crazy patchwork we have now it’s being unwound. A few women could get abortions without leaving their states, physicians could perform abortions in their own communities, no great social upheaval–in theory (the backlash came years later). Striking down PPACA because the individual mandate is their eyes bad policy (as it is in my eyes) might look responsible, but it means that some states (let’s say California, Massachusetts, Vermont) will have UHC while most others won’t. This will spur migration out of some states to other states. A proud state like New York will _eventually_ adopt UHC out of its sense of self-importance; how many refugees will the states ahead of the curve have to absorb in the interim? How many decades until Mississsippi and Alabama follow suit? Would they happily depopulate first? Now, this could be good, as we have the states work as laboratories of health insurance reform. Or it could just be a giant economic refugee situation, creating resentment and ethnic hatreds as Okies once again flee to California, and the like. And all over a Congressional policy? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510/220 "2012-06-27T15:41:34Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > If you have some evidence that any current rate hikes are the result of “Obamacare schemes being impl[e]mented”, feel free to share. You got those quote attributions reversed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waiting-for-supreme-court-decision-on-health-care-law/625510.md?page=12)