OBAMA/TRUMPCARE MEGATHREAD

[Jenksismyhero]

It's overwrought hack-work. I appreciate the sweet, sweet tears and his hypocrisy.

 

Hack work my ass.

 

And yes, there is some hypocrisy, but that doesn't make it any less right.

[StrangeSox]

Hack work my ass.

(Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable

Care Act!)

 

Dumb baby grandstanding may be more accurate, but still not great work.

 

edit: no, hack work is accurate:

 

Who would ever have dreamt that “Exchange established

by the State” means “Exchange established by the State or

the Federal Government”?

 

I dunno, anyone reading a statute that mandates states to establish exchanges or instructs to federal government to construct "such exchange" if they fail to?

Edited June 25, 2015 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

On a first read, it's overwrought hack-work. I appreciate the sweet, sweet tears and his hypocrisy.

 

He assumes his own conclusion over and over, relies on appeals to "common sense" instead of how the bill was actually drafted and passed through congress (why it says "...by the state" in some areas and not in others), and his closing statement could very easily be turned against him by changing "favors" to "disfavors" and "uphold and assist" to "undermine and destroy."

 

Not really. The basis of his decision is "Congress used these words on purpose. There is no ambiguity, no matter how much you want to claim there is." He's not saying rely on common sense, he says read the damn words in the text. And his position is true: the court shouldn't be plugging the holes of a bill. That's not their job. SCOTUS has done that 3 times now.

 

 

[Balta1701]

Not really. The basis of his decision is "Congress used these words on purpose. There is no ambiguity, no matter how much you want to claim there is." He's not saying rely on common sense, he says read the damn words in the text. And his position is true: the court shouldn't be plugging the holes of a bill. That's not their job. SCOTUS has done that 3 times now.

Of course the problem is that the rest of the bill clearly says and implies the opposite so "Read the d*** words in the text" applies throughout.

[StrangeSox]

Not really. The basis of his decision is "Congress used these words on purpose. There is no ambiguity, no matter how much you want to claim there is." He's not saying rely on common sense, he says read the damn words in the text. And his position is true: the court shouldn't be plugging the holes of a bill. That's not their job. SCOTUS has done that 3 times now.

 

Then he's just factually wrong. The drafting history of how those words got into the final bill is well-documented. They came in from different versions of the bill being merged together, and the bill where the language originated was significantly different in this particular aspect. The final bill sloppily retained that language, but there was no intent to withhold the subsidies. The record of the CBO scoring, the debates, the way the various state governments interpreted it all lend weight to this. Scalia's own opinion in NFIB lends weight to it! The fact that nobody thought it "clearly" limited the subsidies until political activists went looking for whatever they could find to undermine the law and described this as a novel "glitch" lends even more weight to it.

[bmags]

Scalia wrote that before that argument ever even made it to the courts, He's a cartoon judge hack, the most activist of them all stuck in a smarm cloak of "reasonableness". This was such a b.s. case for the beginning, any votes against show what a group of hacks the conservative wing has become.

[Balta1701]

Not really. The basis of his decision is "Congress used these words on purpose. There is no ambiguity, no matter how much you want to claim there is." He's not saying rely on common sense, he says read the damn words in the text. And his position is true: the court shouldn't be plugging the holes of a bill. That's not their job. SCOTUS has done that 3 times now.

Link

To defend making the subsidies available to consumers everywhere, Roberts cited a line the dissent to the 2012 decision in favor of Obamacare, in which Scalia said, "Without the federal subsidies . . . the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended and may not operate at all."

[Jenksismyhero]

Of course the problem is that the rest of the bill clearly says and implies the opposite so "Read the d*** words in the text" applies throughout.

 

I think if it were "clear" there wouldn't be lawsuits over it. It's anything but.

[StrangeSox]

Of course the problem is that the rest of the bill clearly says and implies the opposite so "Read the d*** words in the text" applies throughout.

Exactly.

 

Here's but one of many examples you can find:

 

We can’t assume that here. Elsewhere in the statute, Congress referred to state-established exchanges when it clearly meant exchanges more generally. The ACA, for example, limits who can buy insurance on an exchange to those who “resid[e] in the State that established the Exchange.” Read literally, this would prohibit anyone in states with federal exchanges from buying insurance on those exchanges. Federal exchanges would be useless. That can’t be what Congress meant.

 

Under Scalia's interpretation, we'd have the federal government creating a bunch of exchanges for which there are no subsidies and nobody is actually even eligible to use. Clearly, relying on his "common sense" distinction of when they use 'exchange' or 'exchange established by the state' leads to all sorts of wacky, nonsensical problems that Roberts' reading doesn't. I'd go with the reading that aligns with the explicitly stated intent of the law and everyone who read and discussed it when it was being drafted and passed over the reading that fundamentally breaks the bill and destroys private insurance markets in 34 states.

[StrangeSox]

I think if it were "clear" there wouldn't be lawsuits over it. It's anything but.

Hack lawsuits that were rejected by every court that heard them (DC circuit was pretty much a lock to reverse en banc) don't say anything about the merits.

[Balta1701]

I think if it were "clear" there wouldn't be lawsuits over it. It's anything but.

That's the problem - the text disagrees with itself. To argue that this one line should be the focus is tantamount to arguing that the other ones should be not enforced and that the executive branch has no authority to interpret contradictory clauses which they have a long record of doing. To challenge that decision in court is fair, although it shouldn't have been necessary for it to reach the Supreme Court.

[StrangeSox]

I think if it were "clear" there wouldn't be lawsuits over it. It's anything but.

 

Are you aware of where this challenge originated? It was part of a political conference that set out to destroy Obamacare using any means possible. This wasn't some principled legal stand. Hell, that they had to work so hard to find any eligible plaintiffs and even then, there were very legitimate questions about standing for all four of them says a lot.

 

But nobody came up with this "federal exchanges don't count" interpretation until well after the bill had been signed into law, and it was developed by political opponents explicitly looking for anything they could to destroy the law.

[Jenksismyhero]

Then he's just factually wrong. The drafting history of how those words got into the final bill is well-documented. They came in from different versions of the bill being merged together, and the bill where the language originated was significantly different in this particular aspect. The final bill sloppily retained that language, but there was no intent to withhold the subsidies. The record of the CBO scoring, the debates, the way the various state governments interpreted it all lend weight to this. Scalia's own opinion in NFIB lends weight to it! The fact that nobody thought it "clearly" limited the subsidies until political activists went looking for whatever they could find to undermine the law and described this as a novel "glitch" lends even more weight to it.

 

Bills are always different from the final version. And this "mistake" was made 7 times. I don't buy it. And again, it's not for the Court to change it because of what it thinks Congress meant.

[StrangeSox]

Link

I think the oral arguments showed the Roberts was annoyed that they were even hearing this case.

[Jenksismyhero]

Are you aware of where this challenge originated? It was part of a political conference that set out to destroy Obamacare using any means possible. This wasn't some principled legal stand. Hell, that they had to work so hard to find any eligible plaintiffs and even then, there were very legitimate questions about standing for all four of them says a lot.

 

But nobody came up with this "federal exchanges don't count" interpretation until well after the bill had been signed into law, and it was developed by political opponents explicitly looking for anything they could to destroy the law.

 

Please. That's like saying Plessy wasn't a good decision because it was all planned from the beginning by people that wanted to repeal the Separate Car Act. How it got to the Court is irrelevant to the Court's reasoning and holding.

[StrangeSox]

Bills are always different from the final version. And this "mistake" was made 7 times. I don't buy it. And again, it's not for the Court to change it because of what it thinks Congress meant.

 

That still means the whole idea that Congress actually intended to withhold the subsidies is bulls***.

 

I guess I don't really care what you "buy" because it's all very well documented. There were multiple versions of the bill, they were merged, and due to it being passed on reconciliation, there wasn't an opportunity to clean up any potential language issues. That nobody even recognized that this was potentially an issue for a while after it was passed cuts against the claim that the Court changed anything at all here.

 

They use the terms interchangeably, and they tell the feds to establish "such exchange" if the state doesn't. It's pretty straight forward and it never should have gone this far.

[StrangeSox]

Please. That's like saying Plessy wasn't a good decision because it was all planned from the beginning by people that wanted to repeal the Separate Car Act. How it got to the Court is irrelevant to the Court's reasoning and holding.

You said that if it was clear there wouldn't be lawsuits over it. I was pointing out that the lawsuits came from a "throw everything against the wall and see what might stick" political strategy and saying "but there's a lawsuit!" doesn't actually tell us anything about the merits.

[Jenksismyhero]

That's the problem - the text disagrees with itself. To argue that this one line should be the focus is tantamount to arguing that the other ones should be not enforced and that the executive branch has no authority to interpret contradictory clauses which they have a long record of doing. To challenge that decision in court is fair, although it shouldn't have been necessary for it to reach the Supreme Court.

 

Again, that's on Congress. It's the responsibility of Congress to fix it, NOT the courts.

 

I just love when you guys get so pissy about this stuff, but God forbid if this was a conservative issue the Court bent over backwards to change. You'd be all over it.

 

I'm not some Obamacare repealer. I could give two s***s honestly. But I 100% agree with Scalia when it comes to statutory interpretation and the pretty absurd hoops the majority went through to get to the conclusion that exchanges created by states also meant/means exchanges by the federal government.

[Jenksismyhero]

You said that if it was clear there wouldn't be lawsuits over it. I was pointing out that the lawsuits came from a "throw everything against the wall and see what might stick" political strategy and saying "but there's a lawsuit!" doesn't actually tell us anything about the merits.

 

Um, but it does when the whole basis of the case is ambiguity of statutory text. Be definition if it was "clear" there'd be no ambiguity to review.

[StrangeSox]

Um, but it does when the whole basis of the case is ambiguity of statutory text. Be definition if it was "clear" there'd be no ambiguity to review.

Unless it was a bunch of bad-faith lawsuits because they would try literally anything. Which it was, and every court that looked at it ruled against them.

[StrangeSox]

I'm not some Obamacare repealer. I could give two s***s honestly. But I 100% agree with Scalia when it comes to statutory interpretation and the pretty absurd hoops the majority went through to get to the conclusion that exchanges created by states also meant/means exchanges by the federal government.

 

There's no hoops, though. That's why Scalia's dissent is just hack-work. The statute uses "exchange" and EEBTS interchangeably in various places throughout the statute. The federal government is even instructed to establish "such exchanges" if the states don't, and the federal exchanges are completely pointless if Scalia's reading holds. You have to ignore all of the absurdities his reading creates in order to agree with his conclusion.

 

 

Here is another solid example illustrating why Scalia has to either be a hack or an idiot in this dissent:

 

The Court predicts that making tax credits unavailable in States that do not set up their own Exchanges would cause disastrous economic consequences there. If that is so, however, wouldn’t one expect States to react by setting up their own Exchanges?

 

The Court doesn't "predict" anything but cites a bunch of cases of this literally happening in states that did guaranteed issue and community rating but no functional mandate (which is what stripping subsidies would amount to).

 

And even then, no, we wouldn't necessarily see that in the political world that has existed since the ACA was passed. How many states have still refused to expand Medicaid?

Edited June 25, 2015 by StrangeSox

[bmags]

You are saying it's not on congress to fix the language but you are requesting the court to fix the language.

[Chisoxfn]

The easiest way to look at this is "Total U.S. Healthcare spending" because that is a readily-tracked value and it reflects both contributions. The results as of last year continue to say "health care costs growing at a much slower rate than they were prior to passage of the PPACA.

Supporting link. Forbes has a writer who has argued there are additional costs in the system here but those costs in the numbers given actually have not gone up at all over the time period he writes, which would lower that growth rate even more.

 

Basically, whatever portions you count...year over year cost growth is at the lowest level in decades.

Is that number reflective of what the consumer is paying vs. costs from provider. Relevant data point but difference between what impacts the everyday people (albeit interrelated since the insurance companies aren't in the business of eating costs) and what impacts potential bottom line of insurance companies.

[illinilaw08]

Scalia's dissent is a great read.

 

Scalia gives good snark and I appreciate him for that purpose (those I strongly disagree with ideology).

 

But I think Posner's take on Scalia is a wonderful take-down of Scalia's brand of textualism...

 

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/magazin...ual-originalism

[Cknolls]

Aetna gobbling up Humana.....Yeah competition......Who will UNH buy...How about Cigna? Competition is drying up...Only way to make money is scaling up...