Affordable Care Act Survives Latest Supreme Court Challenge

[BumRushDaShow]

Last edited Thu Jun 17, 2021, 12:20 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Affordable Care Act on Thursday survived a third major challenge in the Supreme Court. A seven-justice majority ruled that the plaintiffs had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue. The court did not reach the larger issues in the case: whether the bulk of the sprawling 2010 health care law, President Barack Obama’s defining domestic legacy, could stand without a provision that initially required most Americans to obtain insurance or pay a penalty.

In the years since the enactment of the law in 2010, Republicans have worked hard to destroy it, and President Donald J. Trump relentlessly criticized it. But attempts to repeal it failed, as did two earlier Supreme Court challenges, in 2012 and 2015. With the passing years, the law gained in popularity and was woven into the fabric of the health care system. Its future now seems secure. Striking down the Affordable Care Act would have expanded the ranks of the uninsured in the United States by about 21 million people — a nearly 70 percent increase — according to recent estimates from the Urban Institute.

The biggest loss of coverage would have been among low-income adults who became eligible for Medicaid under the law after most expanded the program to include them. But millions of Americans would also have lost private insurance, including young adults whom the law allowed to stay on their parents’ plans until they turned 26 and families whose income was modest enough to qualify for subsidies that help pay their monthly premiums.

A ruling against the law would also have doomed its protections for Americans with past or current health problems — or pre-existing conditions. The protections bar insurers from denying them coverage or charging them more for it. The case, California v. Texas, No. 19-840, was brought by Republican officials who said the mandate requiring health insurance coverage became unconstitutional after Congress in 2017 eliminated the penalty for failing to obtain coverage because the mandate could no longer be justified as a tax.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/us/obamacare-supreme-court.html

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It lives another day.

Link to tweet

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SCOTUSblog
@SCOTUSblog
·
Jun 17, 2021
BREAKING: The Supreme Court rejects the constitutional challenge to Obamacare in 7-2 opinion. The court tosses the lawsuit because the challengers do not have legal standing to sue. https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-840_6jfm.pdf
SCOTUSblog
@SCOTUSblog
The Affordable Care Act stands. Justice BREYER writes the majority opinion. He's joined by the other two liberals (Sotomayor & Kagan) as well as three conservatives (Roberts, Thomas, & Barrett). Alito and Gorsuch dissent.
10:07 AM · Jun 17, 2021

Link to the opinion - https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-840_6jfm.pdf (PDF)

[Politicub]

1. Such great news!

You beat me to the punch on the post (and from the same source. What’s up with that? ). I’ll delete the thread I started.

[oldsoftie]

2. The trumpers will go freakin' nuts over this one!

SEVEN justices????? I'd bet the 2 are Thomas & Alito; which would mean all 3 of Trumps picks were in the majority.

[Ocelot II]

8. Dissenters were Alito and Gorsuch, which was a little unusual.

Most of the time Thomas just nods and does whatever Alito says, now that Scalia is gone, but this time he wrote a separate concurring opinion. Alito yammered on for longer than the majority opinion; Gorsuch joined but didn't file his own dissent. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-840_6jfm.pdf

[oldsoftie]

27. Wow, that IS odd about Thomas! thanks.

[gab13by13]

29. Yes it is seeing his wife was a Tea Party darling.

[Corgigal]

3. Man,

this is so scary. Every time.

[DonViejo]

4. Two links to articles without paywalls...

Obamacare Survives Again, Supreme Court Rejects Latest GOP Lawsuit
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-upholds-obamacare_n_601ab818c5b69137248e993c

Supreme Court turns back Obamacare challenge, allowing individual coverage mandate to stand
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/supreme-court-turns-back-obamacare-141127188.html

[lamp_shade]

10. Thanks.

[Cha]

40. Mahalo, Don.. I can

Pres Obama & Pres Biden are so happy, too!

[JohnSJ]

5. 7-2, Alito and Gorsuch dissenting. Republicans heads are exploding

if republicans had a replacement healthcare plan, but for 12 years they did nothing except try to take health coverage away from people

How evil is that

[onetexan]

16. one can only hope the conservative judges who voted to uphold the acted with their conscience

as it is unconscienable to deny access to millions of Americans, esp'ly during this pandemic. I'm thinking the pandemic has somehow influenced their decision.

[JohnSJ]

30. Unfortunately, I don't think that is the conservative justices reasoning. I think their reasoning

was because this suit said there were damages, and the conservatives argued that since there is no mandate anymore, there is no damages

Still it is a win, and opens the door to expanding and improving healthcare for Americans

[Ocelot II]

6. An interesting split: Dissenters were Alito and Gorsuch.

Alito's blathering was longer than the majority opinion. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-840_6jfm.pdf

[Submariner]

7. The RWNJ supremes know damn well

the cities of the country would explode knowing the insurrectionist domestic terrorist party just took away what little health care is available for the people that really need it. Appeasing Trump could be a suicide move for the racist fascist MAGAsupremes.

[rdking647]

9. another attempt by the GOP to kill people shot down

[Cha]

41. Yes, in plain damn English!

[rurallib]

11. halle-fricking-luliah!

[irisblue]

12. kick

[bucolic_frolic]

13. Dissension over standing surprises me

Standing is pretty clear cut in my mind. It's so simple.

[Beastly Boy]

14. SCOTUS didn't rule on Obamacare itself.

It appears their ruling is aimed at stopping all the nuts who frivolously bring Obamacare to their attention.

Interesting that they took up this challenge to Obamacare rather rejecting it outright. Now their decision is basically equivalent to rejecting all similarly baseless lawsuits with prejudice.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. I think if they went too far on outright killing the ACA

they would torch Medicare with it too (which is something the GOP had been trying to get rid of from the get-go, along with its parent - Social Security).

[Beastly Boy]

20. I think the SCOTUS dilema is just the opposite.

If they kill ACA, they leave the doors wide open for the sungle payer legislation.

Ever since Roberts originally ruled in favor of ACA, my suspicion has been that it was his way to insure that he stops single payer from ever becoming law. This is the reason I suspect that Roberts will always rule in favor of ACA and will do his best to convince his conservative colleagues to do the same.

[BumRushDaShow]

21. I would rather they leave it and transition the ACA to Medicare-for-All (or equivalent)

That way you don't have a complete, even more politicized upheaval of health coverage for tens of millions.

The odds of getting something that is single payer any time soon in the event the ACA ever got killed, are almost nil. Just getting the ACA enacted at all was a historic endeavor, with some freakish circumstances that allowed it to move forward (e.g., finally getting Al Franken seated and Arlen Specter switching parties to give Ds 60 seats in the Senate - at least for a few months) given a century's worth of time attempting it.

I expect Roberts was intending to kill it with a thousand cuts (and/or have it collapse under its own financial weight).

[William Seger]

22. Yes, now it's time to make the issue moot by passing something better

[BumRushDaShow]

23. Unfortunately we don't have enough in the Senate to do it right now

That is what happened with the ACA back in 2009 - even with 60, we had Max Baucus, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and a few others who watered it down, and because of that, they were eventually sent packing, only to be replaced by Republicans. We only now have the "control" (in quotes - i.e., Majority Leader position and Committee chairs, etc) because people in GA crawled over broken glass to elect 2 Democrats there plus we have the Presidency allowing a Democratic VP to cast a tie-breaking vote.

We have to rebuild a majority with enough room to spare.

[William Seger]

25. Yep, it'll take time and won't be easy, but it must be done

The insurance industry is literally killing us.

[BumRushDaShow]

26. I defniitely agree!!

And having a system (Medicare) already in place, a transition should be the easiest way to get to single-payer.

[Lemon Lyman]

15. :-)

Thank you to the Democrats who had the guts to vote for this, some of whom lost their jobs.

My ACA coverage started 1/1/14, so I'm now in my 8th year of having health care coverage. I want a public option and/or MC4A. In the meantime, the ACA has been such a gift to people like me.

[3catwoman3]

18. Your screen name indicates that you are likely...

...a West Wing fan -

[Lemon Lyman]

28. Yep

And a cat fan! We have 4.

[ailsagirl]

36. Cats RULE

I have three (2 are kittens)

It’s exhausting but fulfilling!!! 😻

[3catwoman3]

42. We have had as many as 5 cats. Only 2 right now, which...

…doesn’t feel like enough. I’m trying to work up the courage to tell my husband I want a pair of kittens to round out the clowder.

The West Wing and Downton Abbey are series I watch again and again. I call then my mental comfort food. I didn’t see WW when it first came out - I think it was on HBO, which we did not get. I lucked in to a boxed set at Goodwill for $25 3 or 4 years ago, and binge-watched the whole thing in a matter of days. I was hooked before the first episode finished - I loved how President Bartlet dealt with the religious fundies.

[Lonestarblue]

31. So glad you were able to use the ACA. Having access to health care should b a right.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that only 49 percent of people today are covered by an employer’s health plan. That percentage has been declining over the past decades. It was nearly 70% in 1998. I haven’t researched all the reasons for that decline, but I suspect it’s mostly related to corporate greed and the acquiescence of Congress in shaping anti-worker laws. For example, Walmart is notorious for limiting many workers to 30 hours or less per week to avoid paying benefits. We taxpayers subsidize their corporate greed through paying for Medicaid for the working poor.

As a percentage of GDP, the US has the highest percentage of any developed nation at 16.89% (2018 figures from the World Bank), and we have the highest gross GDP in the world, which makes our expenditures staggering. In contrast, the UK spent 10% in 2018 while France and Germany spent 11.26% and 11.43% respectively—to cover all their citizens instead of leaving out millions.

Our healthcare system is not sustainable because expenses keep growing as a percentage of GDP and thus taking a bigger and bigger chunk of taxpayer dollars. We just don’t seem to have the will to make significant, or at least too few people do.

[ancianita]

19. It's about the constitutional right to life. On that basis, corporate loses.

[Ms. Toad]

24. Thank goodness.

It's been such a rough year that I don't think I could tolerate the news that my $200,000 dollar a year daughter might no longer have access to health insurance. Not to mention my recent sarcoma diagnosis (although I'm less worried about that because I'm 3 months from medicare-eligible, and don't expect to have to leave my job before then).

[Elessar Zappa]

44. Your daughter sounds like she's in the

same boat as me. I have cystic fibrosis and my miracle med costs $320,000 a year, which I obviously wouldn’t be able to afford if not for the ACA. My anxiety goes sky high every time one of these decisions is announced.

[Ms. Toad]

45. Yup.

She is on a biologic, which costs $20-27,000 every 7 weeks. On top of that she has to have annual colonoscopies, MRIs, Ultrasounds, bloodwork, multiple medical appointments with high priced specialists, etc.

She's had insurance through work for all but 3 months - BUT - work is only obligated to provide insurance because of the ACA. It has been a terrifying journey!

[JohnnyRingo]

32. Thank you for including the details!

Many posts just reported the decision, assuming we've been following the case all along.

K&R!

[BumRushDaShow]

35. You are welcome

I just added some other stuff to the OP comments (including a link to the actual opinion).

[OneCrazyDiamond]

33. This is great!

Now we need to increase the penalty for freeloaders from 0$.

[zuul]

34. The Former Guy must be having a melt-down today.

ACA survived yet another challenge and Pooty-Poot said some (sort of) nice things about President Biden. Pooty basically said PJB doesn't have dementia, which is a hit to the right-wingers. They've been pushing that lie for months.

[LudwigPastorius]

37. Every single, last Republican motherfucker who tried to shoot down the ACA can...

suck my ass!!

That is all.

[Roc2020]

38. Great but not surprised. If Trump and the 'Rs'

could not kill the ACA when they had all 3 branches of government, the SC was not going to do it for them.

[BumRushDaShow]

39. Well in this case

the SCOTUS indicated that the litigants didn't have "standing" to argue what they did so I'm sure they'll keep trying.

Hell, they went through over 80 (I lost track after awhile) repeal and/or half-assed "replace" attempts, so they are truly that insane.

[Sapient Donkey]

43. If anyone is curious about the two plaintiffs from Texas, here's an article

I was curious who they are and what their deal is. I found this article from Mother Jones that discusses them and exposes this whole thing for the sham it is. It also links to an article from before about previous cases which is just as enraging. To think if they were actually interested in making something that works, they could fix the issues that we do have with ACA.... oh no that wouldn't make any sense, because it's not about actually making things better for the people.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/11/this-guy-is-unhappy-with-his-healthcare-plan-so-he-wants-scotus-to-destroy-obamacare/