The Roberts Opinion by Fred Thompson In 2005 I was asked by the Bush administration to assist Judge John Roberts during the Senate confirmation process for his nomination as chief justice of the United States. Over several pressure-packed days, and throughout the confirmation process, I felt I got to know him fairly well. I found him to be one of the most brilliant, thoughtful, and humorous people Iâd ever met. Those qualities donât always go together. It was clear he was going to be a major right-of-center voice on the Supreme Court for decades to come. So it is with a great deal of personal interest that I have considered his opinion in Sebelius and the commentary that has followed. The Antithesis Of John Roberts The chief justice is a good man, whose record over the whole of his career will probably be a good one, perhaps even a great one. However, I do not agree with this opinion. I believe the dissent got it right. I am well aware of the fact that a conscientious judge must sometimes rule in a manner that he personally disagrees with. But the majority opinion appears to be a result looking for a rationale, which is the antithesis of what I ever thought would be the approach of John Roberts. One of his new admirers described his opinion as âincoherent but brilliant.â Thatâs the most depressing thing I have read in a long time. There is rampant speculation as to why Justice Roberts rendered the opinion he did. To many on the left it is believed that he was looking out for the Supreme Court as an institution. Liberals made it clear well in advance that if the Court struck Obamacare down they would attack the Court as politicized and illegitimate. They now say that the chief justice âput the country firstâ by the âcleverâ means of rejecting the governmentâs central Commerce Clause argument and instead achieving the same result by relying upon the federal governmentâs power to tax, an argument that was seen as peripheral at best by all the lower courts that had considered the issue of constitutionality. The same is true with regard to the litigants. A Misguided View Of The Role Of The Court Some on the right say that Roberts has actually hurt Obamaâs chances for reelection; that he has undermined Obamaâs constitutional rationale (the Commerce Clause), restricted his ability to pay for ObamaCare (giving states the right to reject the Medicaid provisions), and hung a big tax albatross around his neck during an election year (holding that the mandate penalty is a tax). There may be some truth to all or part of this speculation. The problem is that none of these considerations are an appropriate basis for deciding a lawsuit. Cases are still supposed to be decided upon the law and the facts before the court. This may seem a mundane point in a discussion involving institutional and national salvation, but itâs true nevertheless. An umpire does not concern himself with the outcome of the game as he is calling balls and strikes.
The States Resist Obamacare by Michael D. Tanner One of the few bright spots in the Supreme Courtâs ruling on Obamacare was its 7â2 decision striking down the Obama administrationâs attempt to blackmail states into going along with a massive and costly expansion of Medicaid. Barely a day later, Florida governor Rick Scott announced that his state would not expand Medicaid eligibility to 133 percent of the poverty level, which comes out to roughly $30,000 per year for a family of four, or allow single, childless men to participate in the program. Earlier, Scott had rejected another key component of Obamacare, refusing to establish a state insurance exchange. He had even returned grants and other funding that the previous governor had received to help implement the legislation. Scott was quickly joined by at least six other GOP governors in rejecting the Medicaid expansion, including governors Branstad (Iowa), Brownback (Kansas), Haley (South Carolina), Heineman (Nebraska), Jindal (Louisiana), and, not surprisingly, Scott Walker (Wisconsin). At least seven other governors, including Bentley (Alabama), Bryant (Mississippi), Daniels (Indiana), Deal (Georgia), Fallin (Oklahoma), McDonnell (Virginia), Perry (Texas), and Jay Nixon (Missouri), a Democrat, had previously made statements suggesting that they were unlikely to expand their programs. Nevada had earlier passed regulations paving the way to participate in the expansion, but Governor Sandoval has since indicated he may reconsider. In rejecting Obamacareâs Medicaid expansion, these governors will be saving their state taxpayers billions of dollars. Initially, the federal government would have provided additional funding to cover the expansion, but those additional funds would have been phased down, starting in 2017. Eventually state taxpayers would have had to pick up much of the extra cost. For example, over ten years, the Medicaid expansion would have cost taxpayers in states such as Florida, Kansas, and Texas more than $20 billion each, while in New Jersey, for example, the expansion could cost as much as $35 billion. (In fairness, a few states such as California do emerge as net winners under the expansion formula, but they are clearly the exception, and there are plenty of other reasons why they should resist participating.) On the other hand, if a state does not expand its Medicaid program, most of those who would have been eligible for Medicaid will now become eligible for subsidies through Obamacareâs health-insurance exchanges. Those subsidies are paid in full by the federal government. That much should be an easy call for any fiscally responsible governor, although the reasons to forgo the exchanges and the subsidies they entail are strong as well. Beyond the Medicaid expansion, at least four governors have joined Governor Scott in explicitly refusing to set up a state-based insurance exchange: Jindal, Perry, and Walker, as well as Democratic New Hampshire governor John Lynch. Perhaps as many as 35 other states have simply not taken the actions necessary to establish exchanges. That may be less explicit a revolt, but it has the same result. Of course, if states refuse to set up an exchange, Obamacare gives the federal government the authority to step in and operate an exchange itself in those states. But there is reason to doubt that the federal government has either the ability or the money to do so. Congress has not appropriated any funding for this purpose and seems unlikely to do so. More important, as my colleague Michael Cannon has discovered, a little-discussed provision of Obamacare makes federal subsidies for insurance available only through those exchanges that the states set up themselves. So, while the federal government does have the power to create exchanges in states that refuse to do so, it cannot offer subsidies through those federally run exchanges. Moreover, it is those subsidies that actually trigger the penalty under Obamacare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance. Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a tax, but only if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange. Therefore, if subsidies can be provided only through a state-authorized exchange, a state could potentially block the employer mandate altogether, simply by refusing to establish an exchange. The Obama administration and the IRS, unsurprisingly, have claimed that they have the right to unilaterally rewrite the law, yet again, to close this loophole. But, at the very least, this would be open to legal challenge. And perhaps next time the Supreme Court will get it right. So, by refusing to go along with Obamacareâs Medicaid expansion and by blocking state-run exchanges, governors are not just saving state taxpayers money. They are potentially reducing future federal spending by as much as $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. While congressional Republicans have been reduced to taking symbolic repeal votes, and Mitt Romney struggles to determine whether or not the individual mandate is a tax, governors â and state legislators â have become the real heroes of the fight against Obamacare.
http://news.yahoo.com/tax-man-cometh-police-health-care-115736849--finance.html dunno about you guys,but to me it's looks like fascism.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
Moreover, it is those subsidies that actually trigger the penalty under Obamacare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance. Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a tax, but only if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange. Therefore, if subsidies can be provided only through a state-authorized exchange, a state could potentially block the employer mandate altogether, simply by refusing to establish an exchange. ----- this is an interesting angle. Obamacare will hollow out liberal states even further. States which refuse to set up exchanges will eventually have businesses move out of the liberal states to their states.