ACA Subsidies Upheld 6-3
Suck it, you Teabags.
WASHINGTON –The still-controversial but increasingly sturdy Affordable Care Act survived a major challenge Thursday as the Supreme Court rejected claims that could have dismantled the health care plan.
The court ruled 6-3 against four Virginia plaintiffs who had insisted that federal subsidies offered to offset the cost of health insurance purchased on a federal exchange operated on behalf of 34 states, including Texas, were illegal.
This utterly fraudulent, purely political case should never had made it this far.
“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
SCOTUSCARE!
Scalia….. I cant wait till President Clinton replaces him with Obama.
LOL. that would be awesome.
Ben… The two of us need look no more… You just said what I think would finally make the GOP collective brontosaurus-sized brain explode… Obama on the Supreme Court! Hell, put Biden on there and it’d still be must-see TV.
Its a shame Joe isn’t a few years younger. It would work
The debate should be done (a long time ago) let a future generation bring it up again if they so choose. For now they need to stick to the issues that would help people like fixing our monetary policy.
Jeb’s statement (to me) on the ACA decision:
I guess SCOTUS didn’t just uphold the Constitution since they are the final arbiters
Huzzah!! Hooray for Cruz. Force the motherfuckers to keep it real. Now we have Trump forcing the Clown Car to match his hysterics on immigration and Cruz forcing the Clown Car to promise to take away everyone’s insurance.
I don’t agree with Laura Ingraham much, but I agree with her today:
Great point. If you hate the ACA so much round up the votes you need to do something about it. The fact is, they are a bunch of blowhards who don’t want to change the ACA, they just want to raise money by hating on it.
Blowhards who have been silent on the ACA for months. Up until this ruling they were wetting the bed, fearful that the court would rule “their” way. Now that they’ve lost, they breathe a sigh of relief and up the rhetoric once again. The GOP is useless when it comes to governing.
If they aren’t careful, and decide to run on this issue, they’ll be asked to lay out their “replace” plan for the ACA, and we all know they don’t have a valid one.
I think they should run on repealing Social Security and Medicare as well. Three pillars of a real winning platform. Good luck and Godspeed!
@j “This utterly fraudulent, purely political case should never had made it this far.”
No. It’s really good that it ran the course. The way that the decision read, the next president cannot reinterpret that clause for political reasons.
If for some reason Clinton loses the election, this decision protects the ACA (and everyone who gets health case by it) from GOP shenanigans.
I think a great ending to the week would be if they are cool with fags…
Let’s see what the next President of The United States has to say on the subject. Watch her tonight at 10:00 pm eastern, for a full hour. Thats right, she is on Hanity tonight for the full hour. Go Carly.
I agree, that if the Republicans are going to say something about the ACA, then they need to come up with another plan.
Like something that is really Affordable, for all!
It is better this way. The libs love courts having the rule of law. I don’t. We will re-visit health care reform in 2017, when a more responsible congress and chief executive are in power. By that time , the average working American will have been shafted by the ACA and will beg for relief from the oppressive law.
@RB “the average working American will have been shafted”
Oh yea… We just can’t wait for the return of “pre-existing conditions” and medical bankruptcies.
What you right wing clowns fail to recognize is that our collective national costs have gone down under Obamacare.
You do know… Emergency rooms are more expensive than preventative care… Right?
Right. So why have emergency room visits gone up?
@LE Your healthcare has not gone up?
Must be one of the few. We’ve seen our employee’s insurance go up double digits the past 3 years. We were told to loose our “older” workers. Workers that have been with us for years, dedicated, hard working!
We provided great coverage for our employees, now we have higher costs, higher deductibles.
Again, no one should go w/o insurance. The insurance companies needed regulations. Now it comes out of our pockets.
Several reasons have been floated — and you should realize that we don’t have actual numbers, just a poll of physicians with a majority saying visits are up — but then you don’t really give a shit about the answer, do you? You already know it all, right?
Asshole. If I want any shit from you I’ll wipe it off your upper lip.
@anonymous: Your health care never went up before Obamacare? Jesus, how stupid are you people?
Look, Obamacare sucks, which is what we should expect from a cobbled-together plan that was designed not to cost any of the major players (doctors, hospitals, insurers, pharma) any money. I don’t love, or even like, Obamacare. But the old system sucked much harder, as you would know had you ever had to use it.
Hey Geezer- Harvard University disagrees with you- According to Newsmax-
“The results showed that 25,000 Medicaid patients went to the emergency departments at Portland area hospitals 1.43 times over 18 months while those who were not insured only made 1.02 trips to the ER in the same time frame.
Obama had said the Medicaid expansion would reduce the number of visits to ERs for ailments that could be better treated, and at lower cost to the government, by primary care doctors. But the Harvard research found that Medicaid patients showed up in droves at emergency departments for minor ailments such as colds and flu.”
Imagine that. That shit spotter might actually be the shit eater!
And to your second response- sure my premiums went up prior to Obamacare, but at least I had a choice of what plan I wanted and could shop it around. No more. I now have a plan that doesn’t fit me very well and costs way more than it would if there was no Obamacare. And wait for the employer mandates to kick in and the Platinum plan taxes on the really good plans. I did use the old plan and was quite satisfied with it. I have used the new plan and am not satisfied with it and I am not alone.
@Anon “We’ve seen our employee’s insurance go up double digits the past 3 years.”
That’s because you now have REAL insurance. What you were buying before was FAKE insurance.
Remember the old:
“Sorry… That was a pre-existing condition.”
or how about that old:
“Your insurance has been cancelled.”
or the old:
“You’ve reached your coverage limit…”
And how many husbands have told their wives:
“Time to declare bankruptcy.”
Your problem is that you don’t know when you’ve got it good.
@RB “Right. So why have emergency room visits gone up?”
Because so many red states didn’t accept medicaid funds from Obamacare.
Sucks to live in a red state with a troglodyte governor who refuses to accept from Washington even what his OWN taxpayers sent when they paid Federal income taxes.
It like… “Hey! Let’s just give a lot of money to the blue states!”
Yea?? Fine.
Robber Baron wrote “according to Newsmax.” HAHAHAHAHAHA!! That’s fucking hilarious. I feel bad even arguing. It’s like taking advantage of a mentally disabled person or a very young child.
I don’t know what’s funnier, that Newsmax was cited as a proper source for information… or Rusty Dils’ Carly Fiorina fetish. Both are pretty entertaining.
“Affordable” Care Act. I don’t get it. Due to ACA the Aetna coverage I had was terminated. My new plan is 1.8x the monthly payment and 2x the deductible (now $6000). I have no kids and cannot have children (I am male) but my plan is forced to cover (and I must pay for) maternity care, children eye care and dental, and birth control, none of which I could ever use. The ACA is not affordable for me. Only Chris Coons’ office had the guts to tell me that some people, like me, were victims of the law and that something needed to be done about it. Everyone else says “the price a small number of people pay for the greater good.” That small number is not so small, so what’s the real net gain? I have worse coverage at twice the price as do millions of others. The folks that have new coverage under ACA have such high deductibles that they cannot afford to use the system. So what’s the gain other than a political one for the Democrats? Look at the stock prices of the health insurers and health care providers since the passage of ACA and you will see who is benefiting. The rich get richer, facilitated by government, on the backs of everyone else.
I have no kids and cannot have children (I am male) but my plan is forced to cover (and I must pay for) maternity care, children eye care and dental, and birth control, none of which I could ever use.
What kind of moronic bullshit is this? Do you even know how insurance is supposed to work? I’ve had insurance all of my life (medical, auto, homeowners, etc) that pays for stuff that I’ve never had to use and for stuff that my friends and colleagues and neighbors have made liberal use of. But that is what insurance is meant to do — pool risks. One of the things that I *really* wish insurance could figure out how to do better is to charge the idiots more money.
^ Cassandra FTW!
Cassandra_m:
That is a rude response and should not have a place where people want to exchange views, opinion, experience, and perspective. Your auto insurance specifically calls out the line item that you pay to cover uninsured motorists, comprehensive, collision, rental car coverage. You have the choice for coverage on some line items, whether to cover your own car for damage for example. You are not paying for damage to your neighbors car if they choose to not cover it. Same for homeowners insurance…you have choices on what to cover. Not for the ACA. Very different. Yes, insurance is supposed to pool risks but at least with other insurance types we get to choose that which we do not want or need. My former health insurance with Aetna had better coverage, by my choice, at half the cost. Insurance companies are now laughing all the way to the bank.
I do agree with and openly support many aspects of ACA, like pre-existing conditions coverage…everyone will have them at some point in their life. The implementation of the law is the problem and they went too far with certain aspects of the law. Even Obama admits that it is not perfect and as such will need to be changed. I believe that the unintended consequences should be addressed with supporters of the law not having a hissy fit at any mention of changing it. Anyone who thinks the law is perfect is not aligned with Obama. Getting rid of ACA in a wholesale manner is not the answer but tweaking it to actually reduce costs and address unintended consequences is prudent.
Wow! I get why you liked the old way – it privileged you. Never mind that just being a woman meant you had to pay more, even if you didn’t have children. Never mind that people with preexisting conditions weren’t allowed in your exclusive insurance pool. Who cares about the people bankrupted by medical bills, right? As long as you’re happy.
And I doubt you have worse coverage, unless you’ve chosen a lesser plan. And the idea that insurance companies, prior to the ACA, weren’t cutting benefits and raising costs is laughable and uninformed. Your complaints are those of an extremely fortunate man.
Dave said, “I do agree with and openly support many aspects of ACA, like pre-existing conditions coverage…everyone will have them at some point in their life.”
You do realize that this thing you agree with and openly support is the big ticket item, right?
actually…. my health care premiums HAVE gone up. I wont share my personal information to prove it, but they have.
whatever, things to get more expensive and the ACA, in it’s imperfections, still allowed greedy insurance companies (Aetna) and greedy employers (not to be named here) to be greedy.
IN any case, i hope this is another step toward universal single payer.
Ben – Great point. Since the ACA adopted that Heritage Foundation’s premise that the ever expanding profits of insurance companies are sacrosanct, this is going to be an issue.
The biggest ACA “fix” that could happen would be to regulate the insurance companies in the same ways that is working well throughout the industrialized world.
New Dave, could you add an initial or number to your name? We already have a regular commenter that goes by Dave, and it’s a bit confusing. Thank you.
I was forced to choose a lesser plan. The cost for a Silver plan would have increased my monthly payment to a much higher than 1.8x (sorry I don’t remember the actual increase but I think was close to 3x my prior payment) I was stuck in a corner due to poor implementation of the law. Coverage about to lapse. Given literally 10 days to find a new plan because the govt mandated plans were not out yet. No I do not qualify for subsidies. So maybe I was privileged but the shock of the new normal for me was tough to swallow and prompted changes in spending. We don’t live high on the hog as it is! My 11 year old car with a clutch about to go any day won’t be replaced any time soon because that money is going toward ACA. My point is that there were unintended consequences that were not addressed and supporters of the law are blind to them. A phase-in or some sort of accommodation to limit price increases was not part of the law and would have helped millions of people in the same boat as me.
Pre-existing conditions being the big ticket item. That must be part of the equation, as is subsidizing the coverage for ?30M? people previously uninsured. That was supposed to be paid for “by cost savings in the system” that the ACA will facilitate. I have not experienced that.
My health care insurance premiums have gone up too and I have employer-provided insurance. But then, these premiums have been going up for a long time — increases did not just start with the ACA. And if you are buying insurance in Delaware, your biggest problem is the lack of insurance options — more competition might help to drive down the cost abit.
And if you are making moronic comments, Dave, I think it is OK for me to characterize them as such. You would do better to use that energy you are using to lecture me to wrap your mind around how insurance works. I pay more to insure my auto in the City of Wilmington than I did when I lived on Naamans Road. I did not change my coverage, but my risk pool changed. MY risk didn’t change much, but the pool of people I live in upped that risk. Because there are more accidents (a good many of them caused by people commuting in and out of the city, but hey), because there are more people driving without insurance, etc. I still have the coverage I chose, yet my own costs go up. My homeowners insurance tends to increase after bad weather years here in DE. Not because anything happens to my house, but because other people in my risk pool have had issues. And don’t get me started on having to pay for other people’s climate change risks. My medical insurance pays for prostate cancer treatments, mental health treatments, erectile dysfunction treatments and all kinds of other treatments that I’ll never use. But they are included because they count as “basic” health care. The ACA makes many women’s health treatments “basic” health care.
Pandora, per your suggestion to use a different name, I used “new Dave” for this. However, it may be moot because it is likely that I won’t engage this forum any further. Just looking at this thread, the words clown car, hysterics, blowhards, blowhards repeated, moronic BS, idiots, and assorted profanity register for me as too rude and emotional to be productive. One particular comment was supported with a “FTW”. I am not a goody-goody nor anywhere near the religious-right, but still gave a second thought to even using “hissy fit” in my post pondering whether it would offend anyone. Some, but too few, comments were productive in gaining an understanding of other’s perspective on this topic.
A closing thought. I was driving past a church not too long ago that had a thought provoking (at least for me) statement on a sign out-front. It said “Everyone you meet today will have a challenge that you know nothing about.” It was a great reminder that we should be kind and understanding because we have no clue of the challenges the other person we are interfacing with has, nor they of us.
I’m out, so y’all can lambast me as you wish.
Some, but too few, comments were productive in gaining an understanding of other’s perspective on this topic.
People *absolutely* understood your perspective. What *didn’t* happen was you doing any work to understand the perspectives responding to you, grappling with whether or not you had enough information to intelligently respond to comments, and accepting the fact that your comments will not produce automatic ass-kissing by people in this space.
I’m always amazed when listening to people who criticize young people for always being rewarded based upon self-esteem rather than what they know or any real accomplishment. Wonder when they’ll recognize that there are plenty of grownups with the same problem?
As a “young person” self esteem is pretty much all we have left. The old people squandered everything else.
^^^I rest my case.
@Geezer
“@anonymous: Your health care never went up before Obamacare? Jesus, how stupid are you people?” We are of course not as bright as you!! It just keeps going up.
It’s not costing the Doctors money, well I would have to disagree with you and I won’t need to call you names. The Doctors get paid from the insurance companies and the federal gov. (Medicare/medicaid).
Here is some info for you Geezer:
Doctors who still accept Medicare patients could see an average reduction of 21.2 percent in Medicare reimbursement rates, according the Department of Health and Human Services. And a new Urban Institute study claims primary care physicians who still take Medicaid patients could see an average reduction of 42.8 percent.
I try to keep it civil
@ New Dave On this site they will call you names and use profanity. Have to have thick skin. Welcome!
Dave, your young and naive. The affordable care act was never about helping people. No liberal policies ever are. All liberal policies are simply about transferring private sector wealth to the public sector. In that way, we have to have more government employees, at higher and higher salaries. Why do you think public sector unions make 98.5 percent of their political contributions to the democrats. Don’t worry, Carly is going to put an abrupt halt to all this nonsense.