What is your ongoing opinion of the Affordable Care Act? (Title Edited)

Politics & Elections
2842

Having the SCOTUS review the ACA for a third time is not only resolutely stupid on its face but also a blatantly political gambit. Plain & simple, that’s all it would be. And I know that Roberts gives enough of a shit about the Court’s perception to not get dragged into this quagmire for a third damn time.

And c’mon, again, let’s not kid ourselves about who’s doing this, what their motives are, or what they’re plainly seeking.

At this point, I am completely finished giving any credence to conservative criticisms about the ACA. Every single one of them is completely baseless & illegitimate, and now that all of those bullshit doomsday predictions have been universally disproved, you see conservatives falling back to their prejudices and to what their central problem really is: they institutionally oppose universal health care - due to whatever baseless principles guide their thinking - and no amount of success that the ACA accrues will ever overcome their illogical, emotional, nonobjective, & biased approach to ACA analysis. Lest we forget, the ACA is a Republican idea in the first place, and no amount of historical revisionism will change that fact or that the GOP writ large - in its anti-Obama fervor - turned against its own gawddamned policy.

I don’t know if the Court has a history of overturning laws because of drafting errors, nor do I understand why it is so damn difficult to just turn to the drafters of the law & ask them what it means. For fuck sake, this isn’t a situation where we’re trying to go back nearly three centuries & understand what the Framers were thinking when they wrote the Constitution; no, the ACA was drafted a mere handful of years ago and its writers have been forthright - repeatedly - in their statements of what the law means, what it’s intended to accomplish, & what they were thinking when it was written.

But even going that far constitutes buying into the bullshit argument that Halbig proponents have perpetuated. They’ll tell you that they’re just trying to enforce the law as Congress really intended it to be, but that’s total horse shit; no, they hate the law, and they’ve now resorted to a nonsensical debate just to try to legitimate their warped beliefs.

Remember when conservatives used to argue AGAINST frivolous lawsuits as workarounds for the legislative process? Yet here we are.

I bought into the philosophical questions once before when we lived through ACA Vs. SCOTUS: Round One, but now I realize the foolishness of even going that far back in 2012. The original philosophical debate was made in bad faith, and in hindsight it was a completely illegitimate argument.

The same thing holds true here, and I no longer afford any credence or respect to this conservative nonsense. It’s all bullshit - all of it - and it has been made in bad faith to cover up an institutional contempt for universal coverage.

2843

Let’s see if I understand this. So Congress passes a law saying that everyone in the top 1% will pay a 50% tax rate. But the law actually reads, “Everyone in the BOTTOM 1% pays a 50% tax rate.” How should the courts interpret such a law?

And another thing. You’re being disingenous. The Medicaid expansion’s terms were ruled unconstitutional. That’s a pretty big deal, and it’s something conservatives were right about. So right, that it was a 7-2 decision.

2844

Whatever you think you’re doing, you’re failing miserably. Your criticism is just very, very bad. There are legitimate things to criticize – you just never seem to find them.

2845

Here is a nice quote from a lovely conservative maniac - er, I mean libertarian scholar - that perfectly illustrates the sentiments laid out in my previous post:

Now, rational people would find Mr. Greve’s comments batshit fucking insane, but conservative-minded fellows like adaher & terr would deem them entirely reasonable.

I rest my case. :cool:

2846

Then you have a Democratic Congressmen who didn’t care about the Constitution when it came to health care.

Hey, you don’t care, you are at greater risk of getting struck down.

Fortunately, that guy went down in the 2010 election. It was idiots like him that caused the bill to be such a mess. We know HE had no idea what was in it.

2847

Such a mess that it’s… helping millions get affordable health care.

2848

And subject to numerous LEGITIMATE legal challenges. Shoulda read the bill, chumps. Might have helped to read the Constitution too.

2849

Cut the crap adaher. Every single complaint ever thrown at the ACA from conservatives was made in bad faith based on baseless lies. They are completely illegitimate, in every sense of the word.

2850

Talking about legal challenges, and conservatives won one and a half of them: the Medicaid expansion’s coercive nature was unconstitutional, as was Congress’ power to force people to buy health insurance under the commerce clause. THe mandate survived as a mere tax, which is actually a lot more significant than it seems, because it means that forever and always a person will be able to be in full compliance with the law just by paying the tax. Democrats will never actually be able to force people to buy insurance. Or anything else, for that matter.

2851

[Sitting bloody against a lamppost.]“Technically, I won that fight, because his shirt has my blood all over it, and it was a really nice, expensive shirt. And even though he’s walking away with my girlfriend snuggling up next to him, he doesn’t know that I bought her that car he’s getting into. Ha Ha!”

2852

You’re sitting here with half the states not having expanded Medicaid. I wouldn’t exactly call that a victory for your side.

2853

The people you vote for intentionally hurting the poorest and weakest among them is the responsibility of the ACA how?

The Dems brought food, and the Red Governors burned it rather than let their starving eat.

2854

The Democrats’ intention was to coerce the states into doing so. That was blatantly unconstitutional. But we’ve already established that Democrats don’t care.

2855

Every sentence in this is wrong. Hannity would be proud.

2856

7-2 SCOTUS decision says I’m right. And in order to believe that it was ever constitutional to coerce states into expanding Medicaid, you’d have to be living in a serious bubble.

2857

If you want to be accurate, use fucking accurate terminology. You constantly say something false (like “the Democrats intention was to coerce states” and “that was blatantly constitutional”), and then follow up with something only very vaguely related, like a SC decision (hint: that’s not what the SC said).

Issues are fucking complex. Quit trying to Hannity-ize them into five-year-old language. If you want to be accurate, you might just have to read and type more than a few sentences.

2858

Further – what’s the point of the hack editorial statements like “But we’ve already established that Democrats don’t care.”

Is there any purpose to these beyond trying to antagonize?

2859

The Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not threaten states with loss of all Medicaid funds if they refused to expand Medicaid.

2860

A little better. Some improvement here. Good job! Proud of you.

2861

For educational purposes, here is a fuller, more complete summation of the Supreme Court’s ruling on that case:

“The Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion is divided and complicated. The bottom line is that: (1) Congress acted constitutionally in offering states funds to expand coverage to millions of new individuals; (2) So states can agree to expand coverage in exchange for those new funds; (3) If the state accepts the expansion funds, it must obey by the new rules and expand coverage; (4) but a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing all of its Medicaid funds; instead the state will have the option of continue the its current, unexpanded plan as is.”