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March 29th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda WEDNESDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) — On the last of three days
of legal arguments over the nation’s controversial 2010 law that reformed
health care, Supreme Court justices debated Wednesday whether a key
provision of the legislation could be ruled unconstitutional without
invalidating the entire law.
The discussions focused once again on the same pivotal piece of the law
that occupied most of Tuesday’s debate — whether the federal government
can require adult Americans to purchase health insurance or face a penalty
for not doing so. As many as five of the nine justices expressed varying
degrees of doubt Tuesday about the constitutionality of that
requirement — sometimes referred to as the individual mandate.
“My approach would be to say that if you take the heart out of this
statute, the statute’s gone,” Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the court’s
leading conservatives, said Wednesday, The New York Times
reported.
Some of the other justices weren’t prepared to go that far Wednesday,
the Times reported, but they seemed to agree that striking down the
individual mandate would basically gut the law.
If the mandate were ruled unconstitutional, Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, a liberal jurist, said the court would be left with a choice
between “a wrecking operation” and “a salvage job,” the newspaper
said.
Opponents of the law — including 26 states that contested the
constitutionality of the legislation, resulting in the Supreme Court
review — contend that Congress exceeded its authority with the individual
mandate.
The law’s supporters argue that without the requirement that people
have insurance coverage while they’re healthy, there won’t be enough money
in the risk pool to pay to take care of them when the need for health care
eventually — and inevitably — arises.
The individual mandate — scheduled to take effect in January 2014 —
is arguably the key component of the law.
Critics of the law have said that provisions of the legislation are too
intertwined for the law to stand without the individual mandate. The Obama
administration has said the law can still work without the mandate, but
provisions such as prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage
to people with preexisting conditions would be greatly compromised without
the mandate.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the most ambitious
government health-care initiative since the Medicare and Medicaid programs
of the 1960s. It’s also the legislative cornerstone of President Barack
Obama’s presidency, and the first federal effort to rein in health-care
costs. It aims to extend insurance coverage to more than 30 million
Americans through an expansion of Medicaid and the provision that people
buy health insurance starting in 2014 or face a penalty.
Medicaid expansion also scrutinized
The Supreme Court justices also spent part of Wednesday considering a
challenge by the 26 states to the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of
Medicaid, the government-run insurance program for low-income Americans.
An estimated 15 million Americans would gain insurance coverage under the
expansion of Medicaid.
The court’s liberal justices gave every indication they were prepared
to uphold the Medicaid expansion, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena
Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer expressing strong
disagreement with the states’ contention that expanding the scope of the
joint state-federal program was a coercive maneuver that violated the
Constitution, the Associated Press reported.
“Why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion?”
Kagan asked. The law calls for the federal government to fund 90 percent
of the expansion for 10 years.
But the court’s more conservative justices suggested that Medicaid
expansion was coercive to states, the Times reported.
On Tuesday, the court’s four conservative justices appeared opposed to
the mandate requiring most adults to have insurance or pay a penalty, with
several questioning whether the mandate falls under the federal
government’s constitutional powers. Four liberal justices seemed to come
out in its favor.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, considered a swing vote, also seemed
critical of the mandate. He suggested that the health-care law assigns the
federal government regulatory powers over interstate commerce that exceed
those previously supported by the court, the Washington Post
reported.
“Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” he asked.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito, both
considered conservatives, compared forcing Americans to buy health
insurance to compelling them to purchase commodities such as cellphones or
burial services, respectively.
Budget office sees savings; opponents skeptical
Here’s how the health-reform law is designed to provide health
insurance to uninsured Americans:
- Individual mandate. It requires most adults to purchase health
insurance or pay a penalty. By 2016, the phased-in penalty will reach
either $695 or 2.5 percent of yearly taxable income, whichever is greater.
People with incomes below tax-filing thresholds will be exempt from the
provision.
Up to 16 million people are projected to join the rolls of the insured
under the mandate. - Medicaid expansion. This would increase eligibility to all people
under age 65 with annual incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty
level — about $14,850 for a single adult and $30,650 for a family of four
in 2012. Non-disabled adults under 65 without dependent children were
previously ineligible. Another 16 million people are estimated to gain
insurance under the expansion. - State-run insurance exchanges. They will be created to help small
businesses and individuals purchase insurance through a more organized and
competitive market.
In February 2011, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that
savings from the Affordable Care Act would cut the federal deficit by $210
billion during the next decade.
But opponents say that the cost-cutting provisions probably won’t
work.
Devon Herrick, a health economist at the free-market National Center
for Policy Analysis, said the law sets up a “slippery slope” that will
increase costs, not lower them.
“If Congress and company have the legal authority to decide the minimum
coverage you must have, all manner of lobbyists and special interests and
providers for specific diseases will descend on Washington and state
capitals, as they always have, to make sure that their respective services
are covered by that mandate,” Herrick said.
The law’s supporters argue that without the requirement that people
have insurance coverage while they’re healthy, there won’t be enough money
to pay for the nation’s health insurance needs.
“If people don’t feel like paying, then get sick and go to the
emergency room or the hospital, those people’s costs will be added on to
our insurance bills as they are today, which makes it much more
expensive,” said John Rother, president of the National Coalition on
Health Care, which works to achieve reform of the U.S. health-care
system.
The Affordable Care Act has been controversial since it was passed by
Congress and signed by Obama in March 2010. Poll after poll has found that
Americans don’t like the individual mandate. But a recent Harris
Interactive/HealthDay poll revealed that people are starting to warm
up to certain key provisions of the law — such as the ban on insurance
companies turning away applicants with preexisting health problems.
Some popular provisions — including allowing children to stay on their
parents’ health plans until age 26 — are already in place.
Other provisions meant to help older Americans began in 2011, with
changes to continue through 2020.
The Supreme Court ruling is expected in June. The court could go one of
several ways:
- It could rule the individual mandate is unconstitutional and the
entire law invalid. - It could rule the mandate is constitutional and the entire law can
stand. - It could reach a middle ground: that the individual mandate is
unconstitutional but the rest of the law can stand. - It could decline to rule on the case and the health reforms would
proceed.
More information
The American Bar Association website links to briefs filed
with the U.S. Supreme Court case on the Affordable Care Act.
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