Thursday, June 25, 2015

Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare in King vs. Burwell 6-3 Decision

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The Supreme Court upheld the law about Obamacare subsidies in the states!!! This is a huge victory for the Obama Administration and for the country as a whole.



In a strong 6-3 decision, Chief Justice Roberts (surprisingly) wrote the the majority opinion in favor of Obamacare, and was joined by Justices Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, Ginsberg, and Kagan. Justice Scalia wrote the conservative dissent, joined (not surprisingly) by Alito and Thomas.



From Huffington Post
The stakes of the case, King v. Burwell, were enormous. Had the plaintiffs prevailed, millions of people who depend upon the Affordable Care Act for insurance would have lost financial assistance from the federal government. Without that money, most of them would have had to give up coverage altogether. And the loss of so many customers would have forced insurers to raise premiums, seriously disrupting state insurance markets.
But two of the court’s conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined the court’s four liberals in rejecting the lawsuit in a 6-3 decision. Roberts delivered the opinion for the majority. And the decision was a concise, stinging rebuke of the plaintiffs, who contended that Congress intended to write a law that would leave so many people without coverage, and cause such disarray.
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not destroy them," Roberts wrote.














Scalia was scathing in his dissent. He clearly wanted to give the GOP a victory, so slammed his colleagues for giving the President a huge victory instead.

From Huffington Post
"Words no longer have meaning," Scalia wrote in the dissent he read from the bench.
. . . "Today's interpretation is not merely unnatural; it is unheard of," he wrote. That is, strictly speaking, true, since this was a new case.
"We should start calling this law SCOTUScare."
"This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious -- so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it," Scalia wrote, again accurately, though not in the way he meant.
"The Court's next bit of interpretive jiggery-pokery..."
"Pure applesauce," he insisted.











Call a Waaahmbulance for Scalia!

Meanwhile, President Obama called for the GOP to move forward and stop trying to repeal Obamacare for the 60th time.
















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