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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEzra Klein: The Texas ruling against Obamacare is a boon to Medicare-for-all
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/14/18141670/obamacare-unconstitutional-texas-judge-strikes-down-reed-o-connorThe Texas ruling finding the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional is ludicrous in its reasoning and unlikely to survive appeal. It argues, in short, that since Congress removed the penalty from the individual mandate, the individual mandate is no longer a tax; because the individual mandate is not a tax, it is no longer constitutional; and if the mandate is no longer constitutional, the entire law must be judged unconstitutional.
To do anything else would be, of course, immodest. As Judge Reed OConnor writes, courts are not tasked with, nor are they suited to, policymaking. Yes, he is literally writing that as he tries to overturn Obamacare with a stroke of his pen. You can almost hear the lol he mustve deleted from the first draft.
If you were ever tempted to think that right-wing judges werent activist that they were only enforcing the Constitution or reading the statute this will persuade you to knock it off, wrote law professor Nicholas Bagley. This is insanity in print, and it will not stand up on appeal.
-snip-
OConnor is a former GOP Senate aide with a history of hard-right rulings on Obamacare; his ruling will likely to get thrown out on appeal, as many other cases like this have. This is unlikely to kill the Affordable Care Act.
But if you want to know why Democrats are suddenly dotting the landscape with new proposals for Medicare-for-all and Medicaid-for-all, this ruling is a useful artifact. The basic idea behind Obamacare was that a public-private system based on Mitt Romneys Massachusetts reforms would command some Republican support, or at least acceptance, and thus be easier to pass and to expand.
Republicans have proven that theory wrong. Instead, the private-public construction of Obamacare has given opportunistic Republicans their most effective attacks on the bill. Those attacks have been legal, like this assault on the regulations governing private insurance purchase, and political, like the attacks on high deductibles and complex shopping schemes.
-snip-
Its easy to look back from 2018 and wonder why Democrats didnt just pass Medicare-for-all in 2010. I covered that fight, and the answer is that moderate Democrats, whose votes were needed, opposed a single-payer system. Sen. Joe Lieberman, for instance, refused to vote for the bill until both the public option and a proposal to open Medicare to 55-year-olds were killed, and without his vote, the legislation was dead.
But nearly a decade of constant and cynical assault on what was supposed to be a compromise bill has pushed the Democratic Party left on health care policy, and persuaded Democrats everywhere that trying to compromise or placate Republicans is foolish. The legacy of the GOPs Obamacare repeal strategy wont be the Affordable Care Acts destruction, but Medicare-for-alls construction.
This is doubly true if Republicans somehow succeed in this case. Imagine a world where Judge OConnors ruling is upheld. In that world, a Republican judge cuts tens of millions of people off health insurance mere weeks after Republicans lost a midterm election for merely trying to cut those people off health insurance. The aftermath of that would be a political massacre for the GOP, and a straightforward mandate for Democrats to rebuild the health system along the lines they prefer.
To do anything else would be, of course, immodest. As Judge Reed OConnor writes, courts are not tasked with, nor are they suited to, policymaking. Yes, he is literally writing that as he tries to overturn Obamacare with a stroke of his pen. You can almost hear the lol he mustve deleted from the first draft.
If you were ever tempted to think that right-wing judges werent activist that they were only enforcing the Constitution or reading the statute this will persuade you to knock it off, wrote law professor Nicholas Bagley. This is insanity in print, and it will not stand up on appeal.
-snip-
OConnor is a former GOP Senate aide with a history of hard-right rulings on Obamacare; his ruling will likely to get thrown out on appeal, as many other cases like this have. This is unlikely to kill the Affordable Care Act.
But if you want to know why Democrats are suddenly dotting the landscape with new proposals for Medicare-for-all and Medicaid-for-all, this ruling is a useful artifact. The basic idea behind Obamacare was that a public-private system based on Mitt Romneys Massachusetts reforms would command some Republican support, or at least acceptance, and thus be easier to pass and to expand.
Republicans have proven that theory wrong. Instead, the private-public construction of Obamacare has given opportunistic Republicans their most effective attacks on the bill. Those attacks have been legal, like this assault on the regulations governing private insurance purchase, and political, like the attacks on high deductibles and complex shopping schemes.
-snip-
Its easy to look back from 2018 and wonder why Democrats didnt just pass Medicare-for-all in 2010. I covered that fight, and the answer is that moderate Democrats, whose votes were needed, opposed a single-payer system. Sen. Joe Lieberman, for instance, refused to vote for the bill until both the public option and a proposal to open Medicare to 55-year-olds were killed, and without his vote, the legislation was dead.
But nearly a decade of constant and cynical assault on what was supposed to be a compromise bill has pushed the Democratic Party left on health care policy, and persuaded Democrats everywhere that trying to compromise or placate Republicans is foolish. The legacy of the GOPs Obamacare repeal strategy wont be the Affordable Care Acts destruction, but Medicare-for-alls construction.
This is doubly true if Republicans somehow succeed in this case. Imagine a world where Judge OConnors ruling is upheld. In that world, a Republican judge cuts tens of millions of people off health insurance mere weeks after Republicans lost a midterm election for merely trying to cut those people off health insurance. The aftermath of that would be a political massacre for the GOP, and a straightforward mandate for Democrats to rebuild the health system along the lines they prefer.
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Ezra Klein: The Texas ruling against Obamacare is a boon to Medicare-for-all (Original Post)
highplainsdem
Dec 2018
OP
They could have changed the 60 vote rule easily, and told Lie-berman to go screw himself.
Tiggeroshii
Dec 2018
#7
Power 2 the People
(2,437 posts)1. Ezra's right.
pecosbob
(7,511 posts)2. Like I posted in a couple other threads on this issue...
if the SC lets the ACA go away, the 2020 elections will mark the end of the GOP as a party. Like EK said, the optics would be so bad that we would see a blue wave over the Empire State Building.
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)3. Yeah, but what about the next two years?
I don't care what the DOW did today. If ACA disappears, I'm taking out stock in bubble wrap. It ain't gonna be pretty.
pecosbob
(7,511 posts)4. If they do away with ACA thousands will die unnecessarily between now and 2020
The SC knows this and that they'd lock in Dem control of the Executive and the Legislative branches for a decade or more.
dalton99a
(81,074 posts)5. Kick
SMC22307
(8,088 posts)6. Fucking Joe Lieberman.
I might be in semi-retirement if it weren't for that bastard stopping Medicare at 55.
Tiggeroshii
(11,088 posts)7. They could have changed the 60 vote rule easily, and told Lie-berman to go screw himself.
But since the other side conducted themselves as model statesmen, I suppose our side had to as well.