Archive for June 28, 2012

Threading the Needle

500
10 months ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

Ever since the Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA, “Oba­macare”) indi­vid­ual man­date, pun­dits have been pre­dict­ing that the man­date is dead. The remain­ing ques­tion would then be: will the Supreme Court find the law sev­er­able, that is, can the man­date be ruled uncon­sti­tu­tional but the rest of the law stands? Or does the whole thing go down because of an unac­cept­able mandate?

The Supreme Court finally answered today. By a five-​​to-​​four vote (Jus­tices Breyer, Gins­burg, Kagan, and Sotomayor dis­sent­ing), the indi­vid­ual man­date was tech­ni­cally struck down as a vio­la­tion of the Com­merce Clause, but by a dif­fer­ent five-​​to-​​four vote (Jus­tices Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas dis­sent­ing) the fine for being unin­sured was not. In that regard, the Court threaded the nee­dle, object­ing to the “ille­gal­ity” of being unin­sured, while leav­ing the rel­e­vant penalty in the Act unchanged.

This deci­sion is cer­tainly a huge win for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion at first blush. But it may prove to be less of a win for Obama himself.

(more…)

Supreme Court to Rule on PPACA Today

10
10 months ago
by Monotreme in

The Supreme Court is sched­uled to read its last deci­sions of the 2011–2012 term today, start­ing at 10:00 am EDT. That means that some­time this morn­ing, the world will finally have an answer on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA, or “Obamacare”).

If you want to read the three arti­cles we wrote pre­view­ing the oral argu­ments of late March, they are here, here and here.

If you want to par­tic­i­pate in the live­blog at SCO­TUS­blog, use this link. Amy Howe of SCO­TUS­blog has an excel­lent run­down of the argu­ments “in Plain Eng­lish”.

Shortly after the deci­sion is announced, we will post up an arti­cle out­lin­ing the key points in the deci­sion. Any com­ments made here will be trans­ferred to the new arti­cle, so if you want to start an argu­ment now, or lay down a marker on the antic­i­pated out­come, do that here.

Update 10:13 am: It looks like the PPACA was upheld in its entirety, by a 5–4 vote (Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas dis­sent­ing), with some lim­i­ta­tions on Med­ic­aid fund­ing to states. Michael is work­ing on the full arti­cle that will replace this one. Stay tuned.

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