TPMDC Health Care
Obamacare
Why An Adverse Supreme Court 'Obamacare' Ruling Puts Republicans In A Tough Spot
John Boehner
If the Supreme Court overturns part or all of President Obama's health care law, House Republicans will find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. They will be implicitly responsible not just for the demise of the individual insurance mandate and other unpopular parts of the Affordable Care Act, but also its popular provisions and the return of some of the insurance industry's harshest practices, like discriminating against people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Recent reporting by both the New York Times and Politico suggests the GOP congressional leadership might try to mitigate the political liabilities of HCR being overturned by introducing piecemeal legislation to reinstitute popular pieces of the law -- provisions banning discrimination, and allowing children to be covered by their parents' health benefits until they're 26. But that creates a host of new practical and political problems for the GOP.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Health Care Repeal, Individual Mandate, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Obamacare, Supreme Court
Medicare
How An 'Obamacare' Repeal Would Take Medicare And The Rest Of The Health Care System With It
health care reform, obamacare, supreme court
If the Republican Party gets its way, it will repeal President Obama's health care law wholesale. Mitt Romney's committed to repealing it, as are the party's congressional leaders and rank-and-file members on Capitol Hill. That's the plan if they win big in November -- unless the Supreme Court beats them to the punch and overturns the entire law.
According to the Democratically-appointed public trustee of the Medicare program, that wouldn't just spell doom for "Obamacare," but for Medicare and the entirety of the country's ailing health care system.
Topics: George H. W. Bush, Health Care, Medicare, Mitt Romney, Obamacare, Robert Reischauer
Health Care
Romney Hints At Radical Health Care Reform Plan To Replace 'Obamacare'
Mitt Romney
Likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney doesn't like to talk about the key details of his own plan for reforming the country's health care system -- the plan he'd push as a replacement to "Obamacare."
But if you string together what he has said publicly, you arrive at a plan that would be far more disruptive to the existing health care system than "Obamacare" would be if fully implemented.
That's what the Los Angeles Times did in a story that the White House missed and the Romney's campaign declined to discuss with TPM. What the Times arrived at is a plan broadly similar to the widely derided blueprint John McCain ran on in 2008.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Health Care, Medicaid, Medicare, Mitt Romney, Obamacare, RomneyCare, White House
Barack Obama
Medicare, Social Security Reports Fuel Fight Over GOP Privatization Plan
The Medicare and Social Security trustees presented mixed news for the country's two largest and most popular entitlement programs in annual reports released Monday. The analyses suggest that the 2008 economic crisis, and its lingering effects on the economy, have modestly weakened the programs' finances -- but that President Obama's health care law, if implemented as intended and matched with advancements in health care delivery, will extend the life of Medicare as expected.
The conclusions fuel an ongoing fight between the parties over the propriety of the programs, and the manner in which the federal government should act to provide sustainable retirement security for American workers. In particular, it puts the parties' vastly different views about Medicare back at the center of the 2012 election -- and will force Republicans to continue to defend their far-reaching plan to privatize that program.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, Health Care, Medicare, Medicare Privatization, Mitt Romney, Obamacare, Social Security, Timothy Geithner, White House
Health Care
Kentucky Dem Broadsides Mitch McConnell For 'Dishonesty' On Obamacare
An outspoken Kentucky Democrat is directing an unusually pointed attack at a member of his own delegation. And not just any member -- the single biggest target.
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) laid in to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a letter delivered last week for misleading their mutual constituents about the facts and benefits of President Obama's health care law.
And in a follow-up interview, Yarmuth again attacked McConnell, his former ally, for putting partisan politics before representing the people of his state.
"I've known Mitch for 40 years," said Yarmuth. "We were political allies at one point. I was a Republican 'til 1985. In recent years, as I've said publicly before, he has a considerable knack for being scrupulously accurate and rarely honest."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Health Care, John Yarmuth, Obamacare
Health Care
White House Says GOP Budget A Disaster For Women
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden
The Obama administration is hoping for a Friday three-fer.
Amid a political fight over women's rights that has caused GOP support among women to collapse; a Friday jobs report expected to show that the economy continues to grow rapidly; and an election year fight over the Republican Party's controversial budget, the White House will host a forum on women and the economy -- to highlight the administration's accomplishments in the area of women's rights, particularly in contrast with the Republican Party's governing platform.
The goal is to capitalize on all three simultaneously.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Health Care, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, Social Security, war on women
Barack Obama
A History Of Republicans Slamming Judges (VIDEO)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) conducts a news conference along with fellow GOP members on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on November 30, 2011.
If the week of April 2, 2012, goes down in political history, it'll be for the fact that Republicans suddenly rediscovered their reverence for the third branch of government.
What brought about the change of heart? President Obama's comments on Monday and Tuesday in which he opined that an adverse Supreme Court ruling on his health care law would represent an extraordinary act of judicial overreach.
On Tuesday, in an extraordinarily unusual step, three Republican appointees to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals went toe-to-toe with the president in the political sphere. On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell advised Obama to "back off." The courts' authority is to be respected, regardless of outcome, he said.
This is a rich new twist for the GOP, which has made decades of sport out of attacking an out-of-control judiciary for legislating from the bench. You literally only have to look back to this GOP presidential primary to find examples of Republicans questioning the courts' legitimacy and even threatening to neuter them using powers reserved for the other two branches of government.
Here's a brief digest:
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Jim DeMint, John Cornyn, John McCain, Michele Bachmann, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Supreme Court, Tom DeLay
Health Care
McConnell To Obama: 'Back Off' The Justices
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) conducts a news conference along with fellow GOP members on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on November 30, 2011.
In a blistering speech Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will continue the GOP's attack on President Obama for saying on Monday that the Supreme Court would be taking an extraordinary step by overturning his health care law.
"Respectfully, I would suggest the president back off," McConnell will say. "Let the court do its work. Let our system work the way it was intended. The stability of our system and our laws and our very government depends on it. And the duties of the presidency demand it."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Mitch McConnell, Supreme Court, White House
Paul Clement
How GOP's Lawyer Paul Clement Helped Defend 'Obamacare'
Paul Clement, the lawyer for the Republican-led states challenging "Obamacare," played a key role years ago, when representing the Bush White House, in expanding the same federal power that's now the constitutional basis for the health care reform law. Today his clients have different interests, and the 180-degree flip in his reasoning underscores an inconsistency in Republican views of the Constitution.
As the Bush administration's solicitor general in 2004, Clement argued before the Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Raich that Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce is broad enough to override state laws permitting medical marijuana patients to grow cannabis for personal consumption. Notably, two of the justices he won over in the the 6-3 decision were Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Obamacare, Paul Clement, supreme court
Barack Obama
Associated Press Ignores Obama On Drawing False Equivalences On Health Care
President Barack Obama
One of the key moments of President Obama's Tuesday speech before an Associated Press luncheon came at the end, when he urged reporters not to cast partisan disagreements about the key issues of the day -- health care, the environment, the role of the federal government -- as a product of equal intransigence on both sides. Republicans, he noted, have abandoned their previous support for Obama initiatives -- from transportation funding, to cap and trade, to the health care reforms that comprise 'Obamacare' -- many of which emerged as conservative alternatives to more liberal policies.
His hosts weren't listening -- and as a result they've made Obama's points about Republicans and the media for him.
Topics: Associated Press, Barack Obama, Chuck Grassley, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Mitt Romney, Obamacare, RomneyCare
Health Care
Conservatives Bristle At Federal Court's Retaliatory Move At Obama
The legal battle over the constitutionality of the health care law was always going to be hard-fought. But in the aftermath of Supreme Court arguments, Republican-appointed appellate judges have taken the unusual step of publicly confronting President Obama after he bristled at the notion that the high court would overturn the law. That wouldn't be an unusual play for an elected politician, and indeed congressional Republicans have blasted Obama for politicizing the judiciary. But federal judges are supposed to stay above the political fray. And even conservatives are concerned that the circuit court judges stepped out of bounds Tuesday -- and made Obama's point about judicial overreach for him.
"I find all of this a bit incredible," said Brian Fitzpatrick, a professor at Vanderbilt University School of Law and former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care
Health Care
Top Legal Commentator Toobin Stands By Doomsday Prediction For Health Care Law
health care reform, obamacare, supreme court
Hindsight hasn't changed Jeffrey Toobin's mind.
A week after oral arguments led him to predict that the Supreme Court will strike down a key piece of President Obama's health care law, the legal commentator stands by his gloomy forecast, and explained his reasoning in full detail in an interview with TPM.
"I'm not wild about being so far out on a limb, but all I can do is call it the way I see it, and I did," Toobin said by telephone Monday evening.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Anthony Kennedy, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, John Roberts
Health Care
Repealing 'Obamacare' Would Explode Debt, Says Government Auditor
A new report by an independent government auditor concludes that implementing President Obama's health care law as intended will make a significant dent in the long-term debt forecast.
The report comes as Supreme Court justices weigh striking some of "Obamacare's" central provisions -- and perhaps the law in its entirety -- and as the Republican Party remains committed to repealing the law if it seizes control of government in November.
"[I]f the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is implemented as intended it would have a major effect on the [fiscal] gap but would not eliminate it," the Government Accountability Office wrote in a Monday report -- a conclusion in line with its own past research and similar research conducted by other government and non-government analysts.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, GAO, Government Accountability Office, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Health Care Repeal, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare
health care reform
Pew: Supreme Court Hearings On Health Care Reform Harmed Perceptions Of The Court, Law
A new Pew poll shows that perceptions of both the Supreme Court and President Obama's signature health care reform law were harmed by the oral arguments at the high court last week.
"While most Americans say last week's Supreme Court hearings on the 2010 health care law did not change their views of the law or of the Court, they did more harm than good to the image of both," Pew wrote in their analysis.
Pew interviewed 1,000 Americans after the hearings on the law's consitutionality last week, finding that they were three times more likely to have soured on both the law and the court itself. Only seven percent of Americans polled said their favorability of the health care reform law increased, while 23 percent said they see it more unfavorably after the hearings. The Court was in the same boat -- seven percent said it improved their view, while 21 percent said the opposite.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Health care lawsuits, Supreme Court, health care reform, supreme court
Barack Obama
Obama Cautions Against 'Judicial Activism' On Health Care
President Barack Obama during his 2012 "State of the Union" address
In his first thorough comments since the Supreme Court began weighing the constitutionality of health care reform, President Obama launched an impassioned defense of his law on Monday, and cautioned conservatives against embracing the judicial activism the right claims to deplore.
"Ultimately I'm confident the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected congress," Obama said at a Rose Garden press conference. "And I just remind conservative commentators that for years, what we've heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. An unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I'm pretty confident this court will recognize that and not take that step."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate
Health Care
Why Overturning 'Obamacare' Could Lead To Single-Payer
If the Supreme Court strikes down "Obamacare," Republicans claim a huge short-term victory, but they may end up big losers in the long run. The future of the nation's health care system would be thrown into disarray, and conservatives may be forced to swallow a more bitter pill.
The prospect of moving toward a more liberal, government-controlled health care system is fraught with political peril, and therefore far from inevitable, but may wind up being the only way to prevent the demise of the unsustainable, existing system from leaving many more millions without access to health care. Without a mechanism like an individual mandate to cover the uninsured and tackle the free-rider problem, health care costs are set to rise at an unsustainable rate and compel potentially drastic action from Congress.
"Conservatives may find that they weren't careful about what they wished for in opposing 'Obamacare,'" Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA School of Law, told TPM. "The economic, social and political pressure for health care reform aren't going to just disappear. There's a reason every major industrialized country has national health care. If the Supreme Court invalidates the Affordable Care Act, we are likely to see a government takeover of health care in the next decade."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Adam Winkler, Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, Democrats, Government Health Care, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Health Care Repeal, Jonathan Gruber, Obamacare, Public Option, Republicans, Single Payer, Supreme Court, Tim Jost, health care reform
Health Care
Health Insurers Prepare For Post-Supreme Court Doom Scenario
Last week's Supreme Court oral arguments over the constitutionality of "Obamacare" raised a terrifying specter for the health insurance industry: What if a 5-4 conservative majority rules the individual mandate unconstitutional and severs it, while the rest of the law stands?
If that happens, then by 2014 insurers would be forced to sell insurance to all consumers, and not hike premiums based on peoples' pre-existing medical conditions -- but without a requirement that everybody enter the risk pool. That, experts believe, would create an inherently unstable system: Older, sicker people would buy insurance, healthy people wouldn't, premiums would rise, more healthy people would drop their coverage and so on until the market collapsed altogether.
America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) filed an amicus brief with the court asking the justices to also strike the coverage-guarantee provisions, if they determine that the mandate is unconstitutional. But according to an industry source, insurers are also readying themselves for the doom scenario.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Supreme Court
Health Care
Supreme Court Justices Struggle With Health Policy And Key 'Obamacare' Facts
In weighing the constitutionality of the health care law's individual mandate, and possibly in deciding what to do with the rest of the law if they strike that provision, Supreme Court justices will have to confront key questions of health policy: What purpose does the mandate serve? How connected is it to other measures in the law? If those other measures must fall, too, what's left? And is that new, diminished law the sort of policy that Congress might have passed if the mandate had proved politically infeasible in the first place?
That's a troubling reality for reform supporters.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Antonin Scalia, Constitution, Donald Verrilli, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Insurance, Samuel Alito, Supreme Court
Health Care
Conservatives Struggle With Key Anti 'Obamacare' Argument
Justice Antonin Scalia
For the challengers' constitutional attack against the individual mandate in President Obama's health care law to withstand scrutiny, they need to maintain two key questionable arguments.
The first is the plaintiffs' claim that the law's mandate and the penalty enacted to enforce the mandate are fully distinct. Their challenge depends on the court viewing the mandate as a command, and not part of a more general incentive.
Relatedly, they claim that the command itself is meant to draw non-participants into a market they may not want to enter. For this to fly, they have to contend that the market the government is regulating -- or that Congress intended to regulate -- is the market for health insurance and not the much broader market for health care services.
This has become a central point of contention, and it could be an issue on which the court's decision turns. And yet squaring the challenger's argument with the history and purpose of the health care law presents opponents of the law with a question they've had a very hard time answering.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Antonin Scalia, Constitution, Donald Verrilli, Elena Kagan, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, John Roberts, Paul Clement, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court
Wednesday's Supreme Court arguments over the fate of the president's health care law were defined by the same themes that marked the first two days: Liberal justices directed their toughest questions on the challengers, while conservative justices relished the opportunity to tie the administration's lawyers in logical knots.
That may seem unsurprising -- why wouldn't the same ideological divisions that have dogged the law for two years carry over into the high court, all the way through six hours of oral arguments?
But Wednesday's arguments weren't about the controversy at the center of the legal challenge -- can the government compel people to buy health insurance? They were about the court's discretion to interfere with the rest of the law, and a decades-long understanding of the relationship between the federal government and the states. Most legal observers assumed the issues at stake on Wednesday were no-brainers. So the fact that the conservative justices once again aligned -- at least rhetorically -- in sympathy with the challengers suggests just how tempted they are to swing for the ideological fences.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Barack Obama, Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, John Roberts, Medicaid
Health Care
Tea Partiers and Donald Trump: Voices Of Reason On Health Care Reform Case?
Jeffrey Toobin's declaration that this week's Supreme Court hearings are a "train wreck" at best and maybe even a "plane wreck" has depressed some health care reform supporters and others to see a silver lining in their signature domestic policy achievement being struck down.
That assessment from Toobin and other court-watchers should have conservatives -- particularly the tea partiers whose No. 1 cause has been the law's demise -- dancing in the streets. Instead, the same groups that staged chaotic protests and heated town hall sideshows in response to health care reform are keeping cool heads, either ignoring the speculation game or urging fellow "Obamacare" haters not to count their chickens before they're hatched.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Donald Trump, Health Care, Reince Priebus, Steve King
Supreme Court
The Slippery Slope Of Insurance Mandate Analogies (VIDEO)
In Tuesday's oral arguments, the Supreme Court's task was to examine the constitutionality of the health insurance mandate at the core of President Obama's health care law. Though the arguments touched on the limits of the commerce clause and past judicial precedents, much of the discussion was devoted to a series of slippery slope analogies postulated by the Justices and plaintiffs in the case.
In the world envisioned by the Supreme Court, a constitutional insurance mandate could plausibly lead to government mandates of all sorts, including for cell phones and broccoli. Cable news took one step closer to the proverbial slippery slope by imagining the litany of mandates an unrestrained federal government could unleash on the American public.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Supreme Court
Health Care
The Remaining Health Care Arguments: Fewer Fireworks, Possibly Bigger Consequences
After Tuesday's explosive arguments over the constitutionality of President Obama's health care law threw conventional wisdom about the Supreme Court's likeliest course of action out the window, it would be easy to conclude that highest-stakes issue was behind us.
It's not.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Medicaid, Supreme Court
Health Care
After Rough Day In Court, An Optimistic View For Supporters Of 'Obamacare'
The snap reactions to today's Supreme Court arguments about the constitutionality of the health care law's individual mandate gave reform supporters a collective case of heartburn. The conservative justices seemed broadly hostile to the law's requirement that everyone carry health insurance. President Obama's Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, was widely panned by experienced court watchers for stumbling at key moments. Jeffery Toobin -- a seasoned vet of the high court -- called it a "train wreck" for the Obama administration.
Here's some antacid.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Anthony Kennedy, Constitution, Elena Kagan, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, John Roberts, Walter Dellinger
Individual Mandate
Supreme Court Zeros In On Health Care Law's Centerpiece
The linchpin of President Obama's health care law will come into focus Tuesday as the Supreme Court hears two hours of oral arguments on whether Congress can require Americans to purchase insurance.
For supporters and foes of the law, and for court watchers who have been awaiting this case for over two years, Tuesday is the main event.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, HCR/SCOTUS, Harry Reid, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Rick Santorum
Health Care
John Roberts May Have Tipped His Hand On 'Obamacare' Reasoning
In a little-noticed exchange Monday, conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts may have tipped his hand that he's entertaining the possibility that the health care law's individual mandate can be upheld on a constitutional basis that's different from the one supporters and opponents have made central to their arguments.
For over a year now, observers and experts have assumed that the court's final decision will hinge on the extent of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce. But the justices could also upend that conventional wisdom, and in a worrying sign for the plaintiffs on Monday, Roberts unexpectedly highlighted one way they could do that.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, John Roberts, Taxes
Health Care
Alito, Breyer Call Out Obama Lawyer For Dubbing Mandate Both A 'Penalty' And 'Tax'
On the first day of health care reform arguments before the Supreme Court, two justices needled a top Obama lawyer for simultaneously calling the fine that will be paid under the law for not purchasing insurance a "penalty" and a "tax."
The confusion arises because of the administration's argument that the power to enforce the individual mandate is rooted in Congress' taxing power -- but that the mechanism itself is designed to be a penalty, not a revenue-generating policy.
The narrow but important distinction created a communication challenge for the lawyer representing the Obama administration.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Affordable Care Act, Antonin Scalia, Donald Verrilli, Elena Kagan, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court
Supreme Court
Justices Skeptical That Health Care Mandate Is A 'Tax'
The Supreme Court kicked off oral arguments over President Obama's health care law Monday by dedicating 90 minutes to the one issue on which the White House and the Republican challengers agree: The justices should hand down a speedy ruling on the constitutionality of the law this summer, rather than punt it to 2015 or beyond.
Lawyers for the Obama Justice Department and for the 26 Republican-led states challenging the law agreed that an old statute called the Anti-Injunction Act -- which forbids people from challenging taxes in court unless they've already been assessed by the government -- does not apply in this case. The Supreme Court enlisted outside counsel to make the opposite case.
The justices appeared broadly skeptical that the law's fine imposed on Americans who fail to carry health insurance qualifies as a "tax."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Antonin Scalia, Barack Obama, Clarence Thomas, Constitution, Elena Kagan, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Health care lawsuits, Individual Mandate, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court
HCR/SCOTUS
McConnell: GOP Weighing Legislative Response To 'Obamacare' Ruling
Senate Republicans are preparing legislative strategies for the possibility that the Supreme Court ultimately rules the health care law's individual mandate unconstitutional.
At a Capitol press briefing Friday, McConnell declined to discuss the details, which, he noted, would depend on the extent of the court's decision. But his message was essentially: Stay tuned.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Mitch McConnell, Obamacare, Supreme Court
Affordable Care Act
The Most Radical Part Of The Health Care SCOTUS Challenge
The U.S. Supreme Court chamber (Associated Press)
It hasn't received nearly as much attention as the other main legal challenge to the health care law. But next Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether the Affordable Care Act's expansion of the Medicaid program is too coercive to states, and thus violates the Constitution.
If upheld, the states' far-reaching argument could invalidate decades of government programs. The law requires states that accept federal matching funds for Medicaid to expand that program to cover everyone under 133 percent of the poverty line. That may sound like an onerous burden for state governments, many of which are already stretched extremely thin. But the federal government will be picking up most of the tab for the expansion. So the argument essentially boils down to this: The new Medicaid funds Congress is giving us to insure more of our residents is too good an offer to pass up, and should therefore be struck down.
"What they're basically saying is, you're making us a deal that we can't refuse because it's such a good deal. And therefore it's unconstitutional," Tim Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, and supporter of the health care law, told TPM. "I mean just to state the argument shows how ridiculous it is."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Affordable Care Act, Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Health care lawsuits, Medicaid, Supreme Court
Budget
How The GOP Budget Pulverizes Most Government Services (CHART)
House Republicans' latest budget is a slightly new twist on a familiar theme: low taxes, particularly on the wealthiest, financed by extreme cuts to government spending programs. Knowing the GOP's -- and, frankly many Democrats' -- penchant for high levels of military spending, this mostly means unfathomably deep cuts to domestic health care, education, science and other programs.
Here's the twist. Last year, Republicans took a lot of guff for their plan to turn Medicare in to a subsidized private insurance system. That wasn't just because they proposed to privatize the program, but because the subsidies they proposed were extremely meager -- that's how it saved so much money.
This year, the budget calls for more generous subsidies. Which means that to hit the same long-term deficit targets, Ryan has to cut even deeper into other programs.
Here's how it looks graphically.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Budget, Dave Camp, Education, Health Care, Medicaid, Medicare, Paul Ryan, Republicans, Social Security
HCR/SCOTUS
The Glitch That Allows The Supreme Court To Throw Out All Of Obamacare
Jason Maehl/ Shutterstock
We know there's some chance the Supreme Court will decide to take a pass on President Obama's health care law for a few years -- until after its mandatory coverage mandate takes effect in 2014. And we know that if they do rule on the central challenge to the Affordable Care Act this year, precedent is on the side of upholding that piece of the law.
But what happens if they determine that the mandate is unconstitutional anyhow?
On Tuesday, the court will hear arguments about just how "severable" the ACA is. Major legislation often includes what's known as a "severability clause," to prevent courts from invalidating entire laws when they find that small sections of those laws violate the Constitution.
By dint of a small, but highly consequential legislative oversight, the ACA does not include such a clause. That means it'll be up to the justices to decide how much of the law can stand if they rule that the individual mandate violates the Constitution.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Obamacare, Supreme Court
HCR/SCOTUS
What's In A Mandate? Why SCOTUS May Take A Pass On 'Obamacare' -- For Now
When the Supreme Court convenes next week to hear arguments about the constitutionality of President Obama's health care law, the first issue they will consider is the basic character of one of the law's crucial features: the requirement that uninsured Americans either purchase coverage or pay a fine to the federal government.
Better known as the individual mandate, it's the provision of the health care law at the heart of the GOP's constitutional complaint. The plaintiffs -- the 26 states suing over the law -- contend the individual mandate exceeds Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce, and the court's ruling on that issue could have the most sweeping legal impact, perhaps upending decades of Commerce Clause jurisprudence.
But before they get to the question of whether the individual mandate is an unconstitutional expansion of the Commerce Clause, the justices have agreed to consider whether they even have the power to take up this case, since the mandate does not go into effect for another two years. And that decision will ride on a fine distinction: Is the individual mandate a tax or is it a penalty?
The arguments they will hear, and the decision they ultimately reach, will determine whether the court can proceed to rule on the merits of the law, or whether they must punt on the substance until after the mandate takes effect in 2014. Either decision would place several key actors in awkward political predicaments without any easy escape routes.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Insurance, John Roberts, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare
Health Care
GOP Leaders Take Conservative Fire For Health Care Repeal Strategy
When top House Republicans advanced a bill this month aimed at repealing one of the most contentious parts of President Obama's health care law, they didn't see much downside. More bad press for health care reform, a splintered Democratic House minority and a consolidated Republican Party. They didn't look hard enough.
Not only have they managed to alienate some Democratic allies on the bill, slated for a floor vote this week, they're also facing heat from the right for targeting just the one provision of "Obamacare," instead of the law in its entirety.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Allyson Schwartz, Barney Frank, Health Care, Health Care Repeal, IPAB, Independent Payment Advisory Board, Jim DeMint, Medicare, Mitch McConnell, Obamacare, Phil Roe, Steve King
HCR/SCOTUS
Supreme Court Prepares To Determine Fate Of U.S. Health Care System
Shutterstock /stefanolunardi
In one week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on a legacy-defining case for President Obama as it determines whether a crucial piece of his signature legislative achievement meets constitutional muster. The health care reform law's path to the high court has underscored a climate of supercharged partisan politics, and the highly anticipated decision expected this summer, in the dead heat of presidential election season, will help determine the trajectory of the nation's health care system.
The main question facing the justices is whether the law's requirement that Americans purchase insurance falls within the limits of federal power under the Constitution. They'll also hear arguments on whether, if the mandate is deemed unconstitutional, other aspects of the law such such coverage guarantee also need to be struck down. There's a chance that the court will punt the case to after 2014 under a law that says a tax may not be challenged in court until it is being collected.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, Constitution, HCR/SCOTUS, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Obamacare, Republicans, Supreme Court
Mitt Romney
The Many Misleading Claims In Mitt's Monday Medicare Memo
As part of an effort to reverse the public's perception of the parties' positions on Medicare, Mitt Romney's campaign is appropriating a common Democratic attack and using it against President Obama. To wit, it's Obama, not Romney and the GOP, who plans to "end Medicare as we know it."
There are multiple, and conflicting, facets to this claim, all of which are intended to obscure one fundamental fact -- the GOP broadly supports a plan that, over years, will phase out traditional Medicare, and replace it with a subsidized private (or private-public) insurance system for seniors; President Obama supports, and has signed into law, efforts to make the existing single-payer Medicare plan more cost-effective in order to avoid "ending Medicare as we know it."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Health Care, Medicare, Medicare Privatization, Mitt Romney, Obamacare, Paul Ryan
Claire McCaskill
McCaskill: Obamacare Is Like Ryancare For Non-Seniors
United States Senator Claire McCaskill (Democrat of Missouri) holds a press conference in the U.S. Capitol
Grilled about her support for the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) told a home state radio interviewer that the law's core structure is "exactly" like the House GOP Medicare privatization plan that conservatives support and liberals detest.
"The irony of this situation is that these are private insurance companies people will shop to buy their insurance. It's not the government," she told KMOX of St. Louis on Wednesday. "It's exactly what Paul Ryan wants to do for Medicare."
"It's subsidized by the government -- premium subsidies -- which is exactly, this is the irony," continued McCaskill, who faces a tough reelection battle this fall. "You think what Paul Ryan wants to do for seniors, you think it's terrific. But when we want to provide private health insurance for people who don't have insurance with subsidies from the government, you think it's terrible."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Affordable Care Act, Claire McCaskill, Health Care, Medicare, Medicare Privatization, Obamacare, Ryan Plan
Independent Payment Advisory Board
Why Republicans Are Fighting To Repeal Obama's Medicare Cost-Cutting Board
House Republicans are poised to advance legislation this week to repeal President Obama's Medicare cost-cutting board, a provision enacted in the health care reform law. The Energy & Commerce Committee is set to mark it up this Wednesday, and the repeal bill already has enough cosponsors to pass the House. It's not expected to survive the Senate or Obama's veto pen, but the debate over this provision cuts to the heart of the battle over how to save Medicare in the long run.
Some background: The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is set to take effect in 2014, and would comprise 15 President-appointed and Senate-confirmed experts charged with holding down Medicare per-beneficiary spending by restricting reimbursements to providers. It is forbidden from cutting payments to beneficiaries. Congress can override the panel is by passing an alternate way to save the same amount of money, or with a three-fifths Senate majority. The health care industry has been outspoken in its hatred for IPAB. Republicans are united in their effort to kill it, and even some House Dems are on that page.
The question now is: Why is the party that's hell-bent on reining in Medicare pushing to repeal this powerful tool for doing just that? Part of it is to score political points by slicing off a key piece of the Affordable Care Act. But more importantly, Republicans don't want to keep Medicare in its current form. Many of them don't think that's feasible. They want to transition it to a privatized model a la the Paul Ryan plan, where seniors get a fixed subsidy -- or "premium support" -- to buy their own insurance on a private exchange.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, Health Care, IPAB, Independent Payment Advisory Board, Medicare, Medicare Privatization, Paul Ryan, Phil Roe, Richard Burr, Tom Coburn
Chuck Schumer
Dems Salivate Over Coming GOP Birth Control Misstep
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
The GOP's ongoing push to allow employers to deny contraceptive -- or any -- health care coverage has Democrats in an amusing position: outraged that the Republican party has reignited the culture wars, and simultaneously salivating over what they believe is a deadly GOP political misstep.
In the days ahead, Senate Republicans, led by Missouri's Roy Blunt, will vote on a controversial amendment to pending transportation legislation -- one that would enshrine employers' right to limit health care benefits for moral reasons.
On a conference call with reporters Friday morning, top Senate Democrats were of two minds: incensed that the GOP is pushing a non-germane issue so hard, and also ecstatic about it.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Birth Control, Chuck Schumer, Contraception, Health Care, Roy Blunt
Barack Obama
Why A President Romney Would Find It Hard To Repeal 'Obamacare'
Mitt Romney
Should he win the nomination and the presidency, then on inauguration day in 2013, after all the pageantry has subsided, Mitt Romney will face a key test: does he take aggressive action to roll back Obamacare as he and every other GOP contender has promised? Or will he accede to pragmatic realities and seek detente with Democrats on the issue that has most divided the parties over the past three years?
The amount of money, strategizing, myth-making, and political capital that Republicans have already thrown at the health care law will make it very difficult for Romney or any GOP President not to enter office with guns blazing. But many of the would-be policy makers who have made dismantling the law their top priority haven't given any real thought to how, mechanically, to unwind it. A closer look reveals that chipping away at Obamacare, or even repealing it altogether will be a daunting challenge, and even if successful will leave the Republican party holding the bag politically for the policy muddle they will create in the process.
"It would be a mess," said Donald Berwick, who led the law's implementation last year as Obama's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director. "If I was given the assignment of unwinding the law, I wouldn't know how to do that. I would thoroughly disagree with it but it would be technically very difficult."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Donald Berwick, Health Care, Health Care Repeal, Medicaid, Medicare, Mitt Romney, Obamacare
