George Will (May 2 column)says that the Supreme Court will have no choice but to declare the ACA unconstitutional if another challenge comes to them--if I read his latest column accurately.
And he also says (I think) that their previous ruling that the ACA was not a mandate that citizens must buy health insurance, but that it was actually a tax, will be a major factor in their next decision.

Is the ACA dead on arrival the next time it comes before the Supreme Court?

George F. Will: The next Affordable Care Act challenge - The Washington Post

(Article exceeds allowable number of characters. I tried to chop it down to a few quotes but I can't do it justice. Not really that long, actually)

Oh I certainly hope its ruled unconstitutional. Its been a world class circle jerk since it was written behind closed doors by the democrats alone and rammed through without a real vote like any legitimate legislation would be.

The frightening part is that when it finally does get thrown out, for whatever reason, Big Insurance will be ready to totally screw over their customers. Many have speculated that this is what Jarret and Reid are counting on so they can "solve" the "problem" with Government paid/run healthcare. Can you say Medicaid metastasized?

An the alternative is..?

Just wondering if there is any substance to Will's analysis. Tal, are you saying that the end justifies the means in this case. Facts and procedures don't matter?
Has anyone read the column or just already back to the standard political bashing. My question was- if Will is correct can the ACA survive another Supreme Court challenge?

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here is the blow by by blow details, you tell me and then you judge is G. Will calling foul a valid one, or an opposition to something republicans tried to stop, failed, and continue to oppose. You must also consider that Bush passed his tax cuts under the same rules of reconciliation as the ACA was passed. Repubs had control of the 3 branches of government, we got tax cuts, Dems had control, we got ACA.

Byrd Rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,

Best I can tell you is when SCOTUS get the case, they will rule, and we will see. But reconciliation is and has been a tool for decades now. Will and republicans have some high hopes since they have voted more than 50 times for repeal. But his OPINION, is subject to scrutiny by the law. I have serious doubts this latest attempt will be any more successful than the ones before it.

Good answer tal.

Will says:
"In October 2009, the House passed a bill that would have modified a tax credit for members of the armed forces and some other federal employees who were first-time home buyers — a bill that had nothing to do with health care. Two months later the Senate “amended” this bill by obliterating it. The Senate renamed it and completely erased its contents, replacing them with the ACA's contents.

Case law establishes that for a Senate action to qualify as a genuine “amendment” to a House-passed revenue bill, it must be “germane to the subject matter of the [House] bill.” The Senate's shell game — gutting and replacing the House bill — created the ACA from scratch. The ACA obviously flunks the germaneness test, without which the House's constitutional power of originating revenue bills would be nullified. "

Will says it is not germane because the Senate replaced a tax credit bill with a healthcare bill. But since the penalty was deemed to be a tax, maybe it can be argued that it is germane to the house bill. And if Will's opinion is that a revenue bill must originate in the house, Roberts could have used his determination that the penalty was a tax, to rule the other way--that is he could have supplied the deciding vote to shoot it down instead of letting it survive. Nothing has changed since the earlier affirmative decision so Roberts would have to say, "Wow, I should have thought of that when I deemed it a tax." (or not)

Also Will said "If the president wants to witness a refutation of his assertion that the survival of the Affordable Care Act is assured, come Thursday he should stroll the 13 blocks from his office to the nation's second-most important court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. There he can hear an argument involving yet another constitutional provision that evidently has escaped his notice. It is the origination clause, which says: “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.”

There again. why couldn't the Supreme Court have killed the ACA based on the origination clause the first time around? Nothing has changed since that time. To rule the other way in the new case (if it ever arrives or ever gets another look), would appear to be an admission that the first ruling was a mistake, seems to me. Or do they say- we never looked at it from the standpoint of the origination clause- because it was not presented to us based on the origination clause, and it had never been determined to be a tax until the first ruling came down.

That's a very narrow view of the reconciliation process by Will, and the flaw is the senate can change any bill the house proposes, and send it back to the house to either accept or reject those changes, and the ACA involved changes to the tax code to allow for immediate tax credits for insurance buyers, as well as the (added as an amendment) the original house language of the initially already passed in the house.

Yes the senate added a lot of stuff to a simple bill, originated in the house, but that's procedure, and repubs were helpless to stop it because they lost the ability to filibuster a spending/tax cut bill in the senate. It is unclear whether Repub can chip away at the law enough to render it useless, but they have been unsuccessfully trying, and no doubt will find another way having failed in SCOTUS already and 50 repeal votes. Do you really think Robert will overturn himself? Or the repubs will prevail in the district court? Despite Wills opinion (and repub hopes), this is hardly a slam dunk, far from it.

If they take the senate in the fall, and keep the house, no doubt another repeal vote will be taken in both chambers but then the question becomes, will they have enough votes to override a presidential veto.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient...dable_Care_Act

Quote:

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On November 7, the House of Representatives passed the Affordable Health Care for America Act on a 220–215 vote and forwarded it to the Senate for passage.<sup>[72]

The House passed the Senate bill with a 219–212 vote on March 21, 2010, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against it.[120] The following day, Republicans introduced legislation to repeal the bill.[121] Obama signed the ACA into law on March 23, 2010.[122] The amendment bill, The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, was also passed by the House on March 21, by the Senate via reconciliation on March 25, and was signed by President Obama on March 30.</sup>

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don't let the facts get in the way of a good story

I guess that Roberts would say that the appeal to the SC the first time was based on the individual mandate, and that they had no reason (or jurisdiction?) to look at the origination clause, and that it had not yet been declared a tax and not a penalty/mandate. Allowing these vital issues to come down to the way that one individual (out of 315 million citizens) votes, is a huge flaw in the way we are governed in my humble opinion. But so is a legislative body that is gridlocked.

Desperation and obstinance often results in grasping at straws. As in shutting down the government unless the ACA was repealed.

Desperation is those that insist of forcing something on the American people that an overwhelming majority do not want. And was rammed through without a proper vote like any real legislation would have been.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by smoothy

Desperation is those that insist of forcing something on the American people that an overwhelming majority do not want. And was rammed through without a proper vote like any real legislation would have been.

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An opinion not based in facts and more illustrative of losers sour grapes than debate of the issue.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by talaniman

An opinion not based in facts and more illustrative of losers sour grapes than debate of the issue.

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Something proven by facts...

It was rammed through as a financial reconciliation... or it would have required another Senate vote which there was not enough votes for after Scott Brown won his seat based on his opposition.

Besides tha fact non-partisan polls have should support for that are even lower than Obamas own numbers which are in the pathetic range.

You misinterpret the polls. The ACA is more popular than Obamacare. The sky didn't fall, the world didn't end. Wait until the 5 million uninsured in red states find out they are getting screwed by their elected representatives.

The case that Will referred to: Case | Tax-raising Affordable Care Act started in wrong house of Congress - Pacific Legal Foundation

[Quote]
Tax-raising Affordable Care Act started in wrong house of Congress

Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services

Contact: Paul J. Beard II or Timothy Sandefur

Status: Plaintiff appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Apppeals on Jul. 5, 2013. Briefing completed Dec. 20, 2013. Oral argument scheduled for May 8, 2014.
Summary:
Pacific Legal Foundation has launched a new constitutional cause of action against the federal Affordable Care Act. The ACA imposes a charge on Americans who fail to buy health insurance — a charge that the U.S. Supreme Court recently characterized as a federal tax. PLF's amended complaint alleges that this purported tax is illegal because it was introduced in the Senate rather than the House, as required by the Constitution's Origination Clause for new revenue-raising bills (Article I, Section 7).

The Origination Clause argument is part of an amended complaint filed in PLF's existing lawsuit against the ACA, Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, pending before Judge Beryl A. Howell, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. PLF's Sissel lawsuit was on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considered the challenge to the ACA from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and 26 states, in NFIB v. Sebelius. As initially filed, PLF's Sissel lawsuit targeted the ACA's individual mandate to buy health insurance as a violation of the Constitution's Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8).

The Supreme Court agreed with this position, in the NFIB ruling
However, Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by four justices, characterized the ACA's charge as a federal “tax,” because it requires a payment to the federal government from people who decide not to buy health insurance.
That holding prompted PLF's new cause of action. “If the charge for not buying insurance is seen as a federal tax, then a new question must be asked,” said PLF Principal Attorney Paul J. Beard II. “When lawmakers passed the ACA, with all of its taxes, did they follow the Constitution's procedures for revenue increases? The Supreme Court wasn't asked and didn't address this question in the NFIB case. The question of whether the Constitution was obeyed needs to be litigated, and PLF is determined to see this important issue all the way through the courts.”

[Unquote] Videos (2) not included in article quote.

Chief Justice Roberts ruled that the mandates were not penalties but taxes. Will has a point in that all revenue bills must originate in the House .Obamacare originated in the Senate.They creatively replaced an entire text of a bill the House had passed months earlier on a different subject; stripped it of it's language ,and replaced it with language the Senate concocted . No one could read the original House bill and come to the conclusion that it had anything to do with health care .

However .. Roberts also did some creative interpretation of the law and the constitution to define the mandates as taxes in the 1st place. I don't trust him to do the right thing this time either . The Senate 'deemed 'the passing of the law ,and the Roberts Court 'deemed ' it constitutional . (yes the reconciliation process was also violated by the Senate ) .
As for George Will..... he's a little late to the game ,as is this suit. The possibility that the origination clause was violated was brought up here before Obamacare became law. But back then ,George Will was still enamored with the emperor and the creases in his pants.

My bolding and underlining.


"In October 2009, the House passed a bill that would have modified a tax credit for members of the armed forces and some other federal employees who were first-time home buyers —..."

"What will be argued on Thursday is that what was voted on — the ACA — was indisputably a revenue measure and unquestionably did not originate in the House, which later passed the ACA on another party-line vote."

House Tax Credit = Senate Revenue Measure/Tax = Germane ? Arguing indisputably that ACA is a revenue measure. Not arguing that it is a healthcare bill.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by talaniman

You misinterpret the polls. The ACA is more popular than Obamacare. The sky didn't fall, the world didn't end. Wait until the 5 million uninsured in red states find out they are getting screwed by their elected representatives.

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Really... when did they pass a second one... because ACA actually IS OBAMACARE. And was since day one. They are one in the same. Its a big steaming pile of manure no matter what you call it. You can't polish a turd.

Also....most of those people that signed up are STILL uninsured because very few of them actually paid a dime towards it yet. And until they do....they aren't covered.

Send the uninsured back to Mexico and El Salvador ....because they are illegal to begin with.

And as far as the sky not falling? Tell that to the millions of people who have had their hours cut to less than 30 per week and their insurance benefits cut by their employers because of Obama making it too expensive for them.