Still awaiting yours. Seriously, we truly don’t understand what you or Carvin meant but would like to.
For those who want to listen to the audio of the oral arguments, it’s finally been uploaded.
The transcript is also available.
The federal government will spend significantly less on Obamacare than had been projected, according the latest estimates by the CBO:
Good news for Americans, bad news for Republican candidates.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-of course, Wyoming) says Obama should stop celebrating Obamacare’s success. 
From the same article:
The bolding and italicizing are all me. I was just amused by the characterization of an 11% spending drop as significant and reduction of 8% in the number covered as slight.
Remarkable! Less people == less spending! And with a straight face, the report about the report cites incorrect assumptions about the growth of health care costs since 2006 (in addition to all the other incorrect assumptions).
What is remarkable is that those who predicted an increase in spending are now mocking the decrease as insignificant.
And we should simply ignore the fact that the decrease is entirely explained by incorrect estimates of participation and over-estimates of cost increases (for example, in constant dollars, Medicare per person costs are over 30% under 2006 projections).
Given:
[QUOTE=the article you provided]
The bulk of Obamacare’s costs to the U.S. Treasury are in the form of those subsidies, or tax credits, which are currently available to almost 9 out of every 10 customers who bought insurance on either HealthCare.gov or the exchanges run by individual states and the District of Columbia.
[/QUOTE]
The article itself says the reduction in subsidies is $209 billion. Given the reduction, why isn’t the new projection $1.141 trillion instead of $1.207 trillion. That just says there’s been a 6% increase in just the 2+ months between their January projection and the current one.
More data showing success for the ACA. The uninsured rate has dropped by 35%, the largest change since the introduction of Medicare & Medicaid 50 years ago.
I know, I know, it’s always unwise to predict decisions based on oral arguments, but this lawyer over at The Hill lays out the case for why the most likely outcome is a 6-3 affirmation of the government’s position.
Ted Cruz hates Obamacare and wants to abolish it ASAP… but not until he and his family have signed up and gotten coverage under it, of course: http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/24/politics/ted-cruz-obamacare/index.html
I don’t think this is something to be held against Cruz. He actually explained the situation rather well in that interview.
He discusses why that should be the result, based on his own interpretations of a very few questions in oral argument and unsupported claims about how Roberts and Kennedy will not only be guided by real-world consequences but will find them to be severely negative. Of course, the partisan-activist wing is hoping for those consequences.
But his prediction that it *will *be the result is just as thinly based as any other prediction.
He wasn’t asked what he would be doing right now if his wish of repealing ACA had already occurred, and why he isn’t doing exactly that.
The implication he gave was that, if repealed, he would be getting his insurance through the US Govt (based upon his job in the senate), same as it was before the ACA.
Come on, there are hundreds* of reasons to bash Cruz. Getting his insurance through his employer isn’t one of them, regardless of the ‘irony’ of it coming through the exchange.
*may be an underestimate
I thought it was only staffers, not members, who were forced onto the exchanges, as part of one of the many spite amendments the GOP induced the Democrats to accept in the bill.
Well, I’m only taking the word of the CNN reporter, which, admittedly, is one notch above pulling it out of my ass*. Either way, it’s dumb to bash Cruz for this.
*may be an overestimate
Politifact has a new “five years on” piece on ACA.
Indeed Justice Kennedy was recently quoted as making a statement that whether or not Congress would provide a fix to a problem arising from a decision of the Court should not come into the decision making process.
Scroll down to: Did Kennedy tip his hand in Obamacare case?
Both sides are trying to read the tea leaves to see how such a comment may impact his vote in King v Burwell.
Yeah, I saw that.
Honestly, I think it’s kind of ridiculous in terms of the lengths to which people are going to read SCOTUS tea leaves. When you look at that exchange in total, Kennedy directly answered the question asked of him in the only possible way. To the extent that it says anything - which I don’t really buy - it’s that Congressional dysfunction means nil to the Justices.
FWIW, there was WAY more hat tipping in the King oral arguments.