…quick analysis of the Virginia Obamacare court decision (short version: individual mandate unconstitutional, severable from the rest of Obamacare, no injunction on Obamacare as a whole until the Supreme Court takes a gander at the law), I really have only one thing to add: the severability issue was always going to be more of a political issue than it would be a legal one. We were always going to have a big bite at that apple; Judge Hudson’s declining to address the point doesn’t really signify.
Tag: obamacare
More judicial Obamacare salvoes this week.
There are two cases in Florida and Virginia expected to be decided this week over the constitutionality of Obamacare. The underlying issue is whether the US Constitution gives Congress the right to force its citizens to engage in commerce (specifically, whether Congress can mandate individuals to buy health insurance). Which, the last time I checked, it does not; and while I understand that Obamacare’s remaining defenders are obligated to argue otherwise, I am not particularly obligated to treat either them or their argument more seriously than is merited. In this case, that means: not at all.
The real issue here is not whether the individual mandate is thrown out – even the administration is tacitly admitting that it may not survive scrutiny – but whether the individual mandate can be declared unconstitutional without immediately invalidating the rest of the legislation. There is an issue called ‘severability‘ that is germane here: the short version is that if one portion of a piece of legislation is declared unconstitutional, then the entire law is supposed to be thrown out unless there’s specific language indicating otherwise. Said language never made it into Obamacare, thanks to the stellar parliamentary skills of Rep. Pelosi and Sen. Reid. It’s not a slam dunk – I’ve had actual attorneys tell me that the Supreme Court has shown a reluctance to be that hard-nosed about severability – but it’s something to keep an eye on.
The Virginia court decision is expected for tomorrow: the results should be interesting.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
SEIU healthcare fund abandons children.
Please note, not every SEIU healthcare fund*. The specific one doing the abandoning is a New York fund for 1199 SEIU, which parent organization lobbied heavily for Obamacare… let us briefly walk this one through. SEIU needs more members if it wants to cover its underfunded obligations. So it went heavily for Obamacare. Obamacare includes mandates on expanding coverage for dependents to age 26. Rates went up – the health care provider claims that this is unrelated to the previous sentence, but the union itself is using the dependent coverage situation to explain away the situation – so the fund dropped coverage of minors as being too expensive. And, as the topping on the cake: this hits lower-income workers the hardest, of course.
The union wants to blame New York state for not increasing its coverage of the union’s obligations, but is taking the time to also insist that it’s NOT BECAUSE OF OBAMACARE. Megan McArdle would like to know why they’re writing explanation letters otherwise; I’ll just note that if SEIU spent more dues money on helping their members and less money on being a raddled shill for the Democratic party then they would have been able to cover the rate hike. In fact, they can still do that.
Not that SEIU will. It’s still barely easier for them to lobby for taking other people’s money. Besides, nobody at the national administrative level is going to be harmed by this, anyway.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*Yet.
#rsrh Massachusetts suing health care rebels.
The executive summary is that the state of Massachusetts is becoming increasingly engaged in two types of legal actions: going after and fining citizens engaged in acts of civil disobedience by refusing to buy state-mandated health insurance; and defending itself in court against citizens seeking relief from said mandates and fines. Each requires expensive outside legal counsel – which was probably omitted from the original calculation of ‘free’ universal health care costs, although it certainly should have been. People often don’t like to be told that they have to engage in commerce and acquire something that they do not, in point of fact, want. So the lawsuits will continue until morale improves.
This is your future under Obamacare, by the way. Better hope that federal bureaucrats are more sympathetic to your particular situations than Massachusetts ones are!
Moe Lane
#rsrh Keyword for the 112th Congress:
:pause:
I need to know these things, people. Contrary to persistent rumor and all available evidence, I am not in point of fact an expert on everything.
Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh Keyword for the 112th Congress:
QotD, Mitch McConnell edition.
Interesting gambit from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell here.
“Over the past week, some have said it was indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office,” Mr. McConnell says. “But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things. We can hope the President will start listening to the electorate after Tuesday’s election. But we can’t plan on it.”
You see, in some ways this is a bit disingenuous; when it comes to killing bad bills and worse existing legislation, Congress has more tricks at its disposal than is commonly admitted*. Two-century old legislatures usually do. The question is going to be, will the Senate minority back up the new House majority when the latter uses some of those tricks? – Because I’ve talked to about a third of the new House freshman Republican class directly, and they have all said the same thing: they have plans when they get to Washington, DC. Plans that usually involve getting rid of Obamacare. And I imagine that the rest have similar sentiments.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*Mostly involving funding.
#rsrh QotD, Not Quite Correct edition.
From the Politico, on the massive Obamacare fiasco (via Hot Air Headlines):
Rarely have so many political strategists been so wrong about something so big.
No. Rarely have so many Democratic political strategists been so wrong about something so big. Republican and conservative political strategists were sounding the bell on the mistake that the Democrats were making… when we weren’t setting up the (rhetorical) machine gun emplacements and barbed wire, of course.
Seriously. We were disavowing Obamacare and talking about how bad this was going to be for the Democrats before the bill had even passed.
Obamacare worth 17.5K dead women a year?
Apparently.
If you’ve missed the Avastin controversy, here’s a quick summary of it: Avastin is a general anti-cancer drug that got fast-tracked by the FDA a few years ago and is now prescribed to under 18 thousand women a year in the United States who suffer from the last stages of breast cancer. It doesn’t cure the cancer; it has side effects; and its beneficial effects are disputed… but the drug has its defenders as well as its detractors. However, now the FDA is contemplating reversing its approval of Avastin, which would probably mean the end of both its coverage by Medicare, and a subsidy program for low-income women.
Why?
Because then it won’t be covered by Medicare and the government can end the subsidy program for low-income women, of course. The difficulty here for Obamacare supporters is that Avastin can cost up to $100K a year – the aforementioned subsidy program only covers about 40% of that, by the way – and under Obamacare the government would have to be the one to make the awkward and politically fraught call on whether or not to spend a lot of money making available a drug that doesn’t magically destroy cancer on the spot. It’s another ‘take a pill‘ kind of situation, in other words: or to be even more inflammatory (but perfectly accurate), it’s another ‘death panel’ kind of situation. There’s no good answer for an Obamacare enthusiast: if the drug’s available and you subsidize it, that’s up to a couple of billion dollars right there per year that the government will have to pay for a treatment of disputed efficacy (and demand for the drug will assuredly go up, if it’s subsidized). If the drug’s available and you don’t subsidize it, you’re denying care under your system that was available previously (which is precisely what has been promised as not going to happen). But if you can get the FDA to remove the approval, well… problem solved, right?
Assuming that you don’t have advanced breast cancer, of course.
Moe Lane
PS: Yes, I’m sure that the FDA will deny that cost considerations are what’s driving this possible reversal of approval. Yes, certainly, of course they would have made the incredibly rare call of re-reviewing a fast-track drug if Avastin only cost $100/year.
PPS: The central fallacy of Obamacare is that it assumes that you can repeal the laws of supply and demand if you wish hard enough. When it comes to socialized medicine… increased coverage, decreased costs, better service: pick one.
No, if you want to be able to pick two you need to go back to a market-driven solution.
#rsrh Caddell circles the Democrats.
In precisely the way that a vulture circles a dying jackass in the badlands, yes. Here Patrick Caddell is telling Fox News just how badly Obamacare is going to hurt the Democrats (hint: I picked the vulture/jackass/desert metaphor for a reason):
Admittedly, he’s been yelling about this since March, and admittedly he’s been privately called by a colleague of mine as sort of a Democratic David Frum (which is a vicious insult to Caddell’s effectiveness, reasoning abilities, and possibly his ability to breed) – still, that’s some tasty, tasty despair there. Accurate despair, seeing as Obamacare currently polls even worse than the President right now, but I guess that ‘tasty’ and ‘accurate’ are not actually mutually exclusive…
Moe Lane
PS: By all means, Democrats: count your cash-on-hand and dismiss Caddell completely. Much obliged.
Why the White House needs to worry about Proposition C.
Read up on reports of the results of Tuesday’s vote on Missouri’s Proposition C* and you’re going to notice what James Taranto did: there’s an urge to declare the vote ‘largely symbolic‘ (amusingly, this includes Taranto’s own Wall Street Journal, or at least the portions of it that aren’t part of the opinion section). This is generally political-speak for ‘the voting public just kicked our rears on a policy issue:’ ‘largely symbolic’ votes where you agree with the results are instead ‘stunning reproofs’ or something else equally evocative of the Will of the People. Continue reading Why the White House needs to worry about Proposition C.