… so ridiculous when just opening Medicare to Everyone (and re-writing the coverages a little. maybe) Would totally bypass all this who-ha.

And the popularity? If there was some kind of flowchart / calculator to walk people through each situation then the popularity would sort itself out. Generally people are terrified of unknown changes. Let people know for sure what’s coming and they’d (we’d) have adapted to it by now. Maybe. Or maybe not. Since few of us can tell for sure how we will be affected by The Act.

It was a pathetic argument on behalf of a pathetic piece of legislation. I expect it will be struck down and it will be no great loss except politically, perhaps, where it may well have cost Obama the election.

I have a feeling that the law will stand. Possibly 6 to 2 (Scalia and Alito). I don’t include Thomas, since he’s just a lump and a judicial disgrace on the bench, and gives no meaning to a decision unless Scalia has his hand up his back pulling the strings.
Although, it would be just as well that the mandate is thrown out and start from scratch. The access to affordable healthcare is in such a sorry state that the only feasible way out of it is single payer and dismantle private insurance. All they do in gouge.

I find your reasoning sound, that this is all a pathetic argument for a pathetic product and mandate. And that the SCOTUS members probably would like to embarrass Obama and make his re-election a bit harder.
But on the other hand, SCOTUS members are also very friendly to the Big Insurance executives – so I wouldn’t want to be mandated to wager any money on how this will end up.

I read the transcript. The individual mandate is very likely to be struck down. Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts are decided and Kennedy’s questions — demanding some special justification — clearly signal he is opposed. Even Sotomayor seemed dubious. I wouldn’t be shocked if the mandate loses 6-3 but I will be shocked if it survives. The oral argument question was pretty telling.

As for the politics, this helps Romney several ways. First, it takes away Obama’s signature achievement, really his only achievement. Second, it allows Romney to distinguish Romneycare from Obamacare and removes that line of attack from the Democrats. Third, it will remind the American People how much we hated the entire health care fiasco and how that excruciating process revealed Obama’s incompetence and now the law itself will be found unconstitutional so the whole thing will have been a waste of time. Fourth, it will dampen Democratic enthusiasm.

I have no doubt the law will stand.
It has been a long time since the court has decided anything against corporations.

Giving congress the power to force consumers to buy products and service?
Can you imagine what the lobbyists will do with that?

Universal Single Payer is the Holy Grail of healthcare in the USA. If Obamacare is shot down it will be another hundred years before it will even come up again.
It’s not clear to me how the loss of the mandate will affect the whole, but given that the Roberts court will presumably do what it can to defeat the Obama administration and his chances for re-election, I predict that the decision will be as damaging as the court can devise.
Recall Citizens United: “Go back and find a way to make the issue cover the whole range of campaign financing – so we can strike down a hundred years of precedent.”
Which they thereupon did.

Obama’s signature political achievement: the ACA. Between the whole kabuki dance of getting this piece of shit law passed to the splitting of monkey hairs before the Supreme Court, to the simple fact that this abomination doesn’t even come into full effect until 2014; I just give up.

I don’t think Monty Python at their satirical peak could have pulled off anything half as ludicrous.

The mandate goes down 6 to 3.

That’s why I suspect it’s more likely for the law to stand. Big insurance wrote it. They want it, unless the whole ACA can be struck down. The five wingers, and especially Alito and Roberts are corpratists through and through. Then again, I’m not a betting man either.

Question: if SCOTUS rejects the mandate, does this overturn the entire bill?

I ask because if ACA is overturned, I suspect a lot of citizens will be surprised to find that, for example, their >18-yr-old kids are once again uninsured.

“Draw them in with prospect of gain, take them by confusion.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The health care fight morphed from universal to pubilic option to individual mandate where now the supposed “liberals” are defending a mandate to buy a defective product that creates profit through human suffering. The fascists are winning. Even if the mandate is struck down by itself, the majority of this industry friendly act will remain intact or the industry will revert back to what is was doing prior to the act.

The questions that should be before the court is whether health care is a human right or not and should an industry profit off the misfortunes of others?

Would to God Eric Holder had that kinda guts. His department’s case is clearly pinched as far as it will go; almost as if he had devised to lose while appearing to contest.

Obama’s team pushed to get this case heard before the election, which makes it hard for me to believe they thought SC would strike it. Obama’s team might be effing awful but they are not stupid and they would have spent a lot of time looking at all the potential ways to handle this case.

I think it is not going to get struck down, because if it does O’s election chances go up in smoke and he would not have risked that.

You have insider information that I don’t have.

industries profitting on the misfortune of others is a daily thing. So the only question is health care a right? Do tax payers have any right to demand x% of taxes be used for health.

not the question for this court. this is the court that said corporations are people.

They can strike down parts or the entire thing.

I see Obama as pandering, ineffective and weak, yet I don’t see how he could lose the election. Regardless of what SCOTUS decides, Romney, as they say, is no Ronald Reagan.
Of course, Reagan was one of the most damaging presidents in history, from the perspective of labor rights, military expansion, national debt, etc.,etc..but he was an actor. He had lots of people fooled.
Nobody wants to have a beer with Romney.
I may be wrong, but I think a majority will decide that, as bad as he is, he’s still better than Mitt. IMHO

I actually think they feel they can survive in either case. If they were afraid of losing,you would think they would be doing a lot more spinning, but they have been surprisingly quiet.

For all those whining about losing the nothing that obamacare gave you (and there arent many here), tough shit. The argument that the administration is making is at the idealogical core of thier neoliberal assault on everything you democrats were supposed to believe, or that you think you still belive…all so the side you think your on, can claim that they “won” something. “the class of people affected” can go fuck themselves. That the “class of people” least responsible for the failure of capitalism are to be treated as most responsible – that the burden of sustaining and paying for a rent extracting, health care-profit engine for the plutocrats, (which should be destroyed and abolished) should fall on the people who can least afford it, and WHO BENEFIT LEAST OF ALL FROM IT. theres your obama. wal st stooge. servant of the 1 pecent. high priest of austerity and wager of aggressive wars.

The mandate goes down 6-2 — with Thomas asleep.

I don’t think Roberts will allow striking down just the mandate. His insurance buddies would be vewwy, vewwy mad.

They probably feel that the fix is in. After all look at who is going to benefit most from the obamacare monstrosity – not exactly a crowd to write off on the first or second day.

Other than the weapons industry I can’t think of any other endeavor other than the health insurance industry, where the profit margin is directly tied to denying someone life.

Yes, those guys have lots of profits at stake and lots of friends in the thug establishment, with lots of money.

Right that goes right to the whole fraudulent media trope that this is some kind of old fashioned democratic giveaway to the people… this is the 180 degree exact opposite of that…this is a rent extracting feudal tax on the people – going directly into the private wealth of the 1% – the finance capital sector

We get closer to the Ayn Rand world every day.

Justice Ginsburg is already lining up to privatize Social Security, Medicare, etc – I wonder if she has a diary fawning over Ryan:

JUSTICE GINSBURG: It just seems very strange to me that there’s no question we can have a Social Security system besides all the people who say: I’m being forced to pay for something I don’t want. And this it seems to me, to try to get care for the ones who need it by having everyone in the pool, but is also trying to preserve a role for the private sector, for the private insurers. There’s something very odd about that, that the government can take over the whole thing and we all say, oh, yes, that’s fine, but if the government wants to get — to preserve private insurers, it can’t do that.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74543.html

I think the mandate is in, 5-4 or 6-3, depending on Roberts. With the prospect of Obama winning in 2012 over a very weak and fractured Republican party Roberts probably wants to round off a few pointy edges. This will do that. And his support of Citizens United will appear be a quirk. The harsh questioning don’t mean too much either, really. Just think of the hard questions your parents asked you before the gave you the keys to the car. And how much you had to parse your answers to get them. We all parse to get what we want and the political economy demands the political expediency of the June decision. It’s the economy we’ll fight about. Not this contraption. No Republican of nat’l stature could of got this passed. Imagine what the Tea Party/Palin/Koch Bros would of done to him/her. And for that reason alone I think this thing is a done deal.

Did that make any sense to you?

… that the government can take over the whole thing and we all say, oh, yes, that’s fine

Great framing. File under: with friends like these …

You may be right. But it would be very tempting to strike down Barry’s singular achievement — all of it — AND do something that is quite popular, no?

That doesn’t hurt the insurance industry. They were raping us before ACA and they will do so even more if it’s struck down, no?

In a Ginsburg-as-Ayn-Rand way.

“No Republican of nat’l stature could of got this passed.”

Yeah, showing the danger of putting Democrats in office. Only Obama could nationalize the corporate welfare known as ACA. Then you’ve got Obama outdoing Bush on the authoritarian Constitution-shredding front with his assassinating citizens, going to war without Congressional authorization, etc. When a Republican is in office the Democrats in office pretend to oppose such things, but then once they get handed the keys, they outdo the the Republicans. That John McCain wouldn’t have been able to nationalize Romneycare is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Looks like Ginsberg is leaning mandate in. Her rationale being that the government can compel people to pay for Social Security even if they oppose it. And then she goes off on a tangent saying that basically there is nothing preventing government from enriching private business at the expense of taxpayers. Swell. We need to pass laws that allow us to recall our representation more often if basically they can ignore the will of those they profess to represent in order to collect re election funding.

He. Not they.
But it’s no news. If the preceeding office holder asserted an executive right to make war, his successor will assert a right to murder American citizens as needed.

Popular? These folk don’t lose a wink of sleep if any or all of us hate their rulings.

Gee, hindsight being twenty/twenty Medicare for All starts to look pretty good.

How would the Republicans explain Medicare getting taken away from those Teabaggers holding signs to keep the government out of their Medicare?

Instead the court may strike out the part of Obamacare inserted at the request of the America “healthcare” industry which will actually probably wipe out that same industry as it death spirals into the ground -higher cost less people, rinse and repeat.

What I can’t understand is the argument that the tax penalty is necessary because, people who are uninsured will get treatment if they need it at an emergency room (implied free treatment). You can be sure if you show up at at a emergency room they will bill you and hound you for the rest of your life. Sounds like ample penalty to me.

The repubs, dems and SC all work for the same boss, so I think this passes. Forcing millions more to buy insurance is to big a bounty for the Boss to lose

I agree. Their politics clearly trumps whether we peons give a rat’s ass. I was just pointing out that screwing Barry AND doing something popular may appeal to them — in a “having their cake and eating it too” sort of way.

But I may be wrong. It’s happened before.

I tend to agree with this except for the ability for SCOTUS to take a free shot at Obama right before the elections.

Agree.

Of course ,the outcome is already cooked by justices,the despicable mandate will stand(what do you expect when corporations are beeter than people).I’m astonished and overwhelmed about the amount of crap that was argued in this case.”vaccine inoculation”,car insurance,you name it.
It’s a circus.

What then, next?

Does this INDEED pave the way for single payer issues to begin?

Sadly, I remain quite skeptical about a corporate fascist friendly SCOTUS and I’m skeptical about the insurance industry at large not having firepower and control over all of this.

On the other hand, the news and info of the past 72 hours (so much of it mislabeling) has also flabbergasted me.

1) Why are liberals and proggies tagged with being PRO mandate? Let’s call them what they are, DNC centrist dims, who favor corporate fascism. THey ain’t liberals by ANY means.

2) NEVER would have thought I’d have seen tonite’s PBS NewsHour discussing the collapse of the mandate, collapse of ACA, and the inevitable move to some kind of nationalized, monolithic model of care delivery that eliminates the 3rd party insurers. And the buzz of this consideration is rampant on the internet.

Incredible 72 hours . . . but really a mess of all hell to interpret.

Mr.’s Walker/Dayen have been great on it, as has Scarecrow and the new diarist Beverly Mann . . . Massaccio now wades in (and has in the past).

N despite all that great reading, the confusion reigns.

*G*

I SO MUCH want to believe this is the fall of the house of cards that healthcare and banking/finance are built upon, but the stranglehold the hands of the corporate fascists have on us, our systems, is firm.

Love your comment, and GREATLY appreciate your reference to mislabeled liberals et al . . . the smoke and mirrors and kabuki in all of this mislabels all the participants . . . I suspect, deliberately so.

The corporate fascist grip on all of us is firm, indeed.

I think it is not going to get struck down, because if it does O’s election chances go up in smoke and he would not have risked that.

N just HOW to you correlate those two things? That’s one hell of a leap from one to the other.

Obama is a lock IMHO, regardless of the ACA issue.

The Elephants have shown their stripes, women, minorities, LGBT and uninformed voters will flock to defeat the radically inhuman and inhumane GOP and vote for Obama.

Many proggies like myself will vote 3rd party, have quit the DIM party after decades of loyalty, but we still ain’t big enough to cost Obama the election, either.

Nope, this one’s in the can.

ACA is all about corporate power and it’s strangle hold on SCOTUS and the rest of the nation . . . that’s the war being waged, not an election, regardless of what the MSM would have anyone believe (they’re trying to sell ad time and protect corporate sponsors).

;-)

Indeed.

End of story.

While the “billing and hounding” portion is probably a great deal of fun it ultimately does not contribute to the bottom line. In a capitalist society the bottom line is the be all and end all. If you look at it from this perspective then it really does make this clear that this is NOT about protecting patients or health care this is about MONEY. It’s about who is responsible for paying for services that are REQUIRED(and required should in no way imply that there is a standard of care guaranteed)when someone shows up in an ER. It’s about guaranteeing a stream of revenue for hospitals.

“The result was a muddle.”

It was, and that seems appropriate, since the whole damn “reform act” is a muddle. One thing that would have clarified it would have been giving people a real public option, but that, of course, would mean that less money would be made off of sickness and aging in amurka, and that would have the robber barons on Wall Street shitting green nickels. Obama’s priority of protecting the corporate ethic so infused the jewel in his “reform” crown that I would have no problem with SCOTUS neutering the whole damn thing.

What Solerso said!

If Obama was so desperate for a congressional “win” (and I admit, he was, since by then, the people who helped him run the republicans out of power were all looking at each other and going: “What the fuck is he DOING?”) then he could have picked a cherry just by telling Pelosi to let that group of dems in the House bring up that bill to strip the Health Insurance pirates of their exemption from the anti-trust laws. It was a guaranteed shaming and ass-kicking for the GOP.

Instead, he had her block it, and thereby “kept faith” with the healthcare thieves, while pissing the rest of us right down the urinal.

“It’s about guaranteeing a stream of revenue for hospitals.”

CLACK! 8 ball in the side pocket! :o)

“In a Ginsburg-as-Ayn-Rand way.”

Best line of the thread…so far. :o)

The damn “government takeover” is all in the wrong direction, forcing people to sign with ANY corporate HC provider…

What should have happened is that we needed to start up and FUND THE HELL OUT OF a government-run healthcare system for anyone who didn’t want to be involved with the tender mercies of Humana, United Healthcare, Wellpoint, etc…we don’t have to legislate them out of business, just start opening up public clinics all over the country. If we could run the Canadian system through a copier and drop it on the U.S. everyone in the U.S. would be better off, except the stockholders in the major HC insurers and Big Pharma, etc.

But they would shriek “socialism”…and it would be and that’s exactly what we need. And the idiots who want to subsidize greed as the medical ethic, could continue to do it, while the rest of us peeled this gigantic, bloated, leech off our asses.

Larue, always good to hear your voice, but I don’t know about Obama being a lock. I think a lot of people are looking at the goat rodeo and thinking that, but there’s a long time between now and the voting booth, and Obama is still basically hamstrung; there is really nothing much he can do to prime the economic pump, as long as the GOP has the House purse strings. Boehner and the GOP congers have been laying off him some, lately, but I think that will cease, and the fur will fly, in pretty short order.

Obama’s getting a “surge” from all of the repub disarray, but that’s not going to last.

Finally, I still don’t think he can ride the “I suck less!” pony back into the White House. We’ll see.

I don’t either. That won’t help me sleep tonight.

OBVIOUSLY, the people in his administration, and even president Obama himself, are not as smart as the liberal and progressive Democrats who got out the vote that got him elected. The greatest frustration we have is that the Obama administration stopped listening to us the day after he got elected. They thought they were smarter. They were wrong!

Actually I get it. The Admin. is mocking Scalia and the right wingers in a way. They did just this when they used the radical one time interpretation of the 14th Amendment to get BV$H elected. They said then that it ONLY applied that one time for George not eveybody else as I recall. So here the Obamaites are saying to Scalia and the others , Hey you guys are great at one time exclusions so what’s the problem here?

No, your wrong. It has nothing to do with whether they’re smarter or we are. They are taking care of the people and Corps. that FUNDED them not the people that voted for them. If you examine their actions along that line of reasoning everything they’ve done makes sense. They’re owned by these interests not us.