A Republican effort to sabotage Obamacare was just rejected by the Supreme Court

[mfcorey1]

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/27/21238357/obamacare-supreme-court-maine-communities-united-states-risk-corridors-sonia-sotomayor?fbclid=IwAR3YHkjmFFJK6qgYBhjA42MS8txgnUWiLYGxLTnXYex5ctXcHrQqpObd_c0

On Monday, the Supreme Court voted 8-1 to reject a Republican effort to sabotage parts of the Affordable Care Act. The upshot of this decision is that health insurers will receive payments owed to them under Obamacare’s “risk corridor” program.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s majority opinion in Maine Community Health Options v. United States, relies on “a principle as old as the Nation itself,” according to the opinion. That principle: “The Government should honor its obligations.”

The vote in Maine Community was not close. Eight justices joined all or nearly all of Sotomayor’s opinion, leaving Justice Samuel Alito in a lonely dissent. That’s a bit of a surprising outcome given what was at stake in the case, which involved a $12 billion Republican scheme to sabotage Obamacare.

And yet, after years of litigation seeking to destroy the Affordable Care Act, and after many more years of partisan rancor bitterly dividing the two major political parties on whether Obamacare should continue to exist, only Justice Alito was willing to endorse this particular effort to undercut President Obama’s primary legislative accomplishment.

The other eight justices all agreed that the risk corridors program should be preserved.

Risk corridors, briefly explained
Insurance operates on a fairly basic model. People who fear some kind of unfortunate event agree to pay premiums to the insurer. If that event happens, the insurer pays at least some of the customer’s costs.

This model necessarily involves risk for insurance companies. If they set premiums too high, they won’t be able to attract customers. But if they set premiums too low, an insurer can potentially be obligated to pay for costs that vastly exceed the amount of money they’ve brought in. For this reason, insurers are often reluctant to enter new markets because they might not know enough about that market to set the right premiums.

[mobeau69]

1. 8-1. Ha! Scalito lone decent naturally. nt/nc

[Mike 03]

2. That surprised me a little.

I thought the dissent would be Thomas or possibly Kavanaugh.

[Frustratedlady]

3. Is this the last we will hear of repeals of the ACA?

I realize it takes a long time for the Repukes to "get it" but they've lost enough times they should finally catch on. I'm SO sick of these yahoos.

I hope this next election wipes out most of them so this country can get back to business, if any of us survive the virus.

[lagomorph777]

4. They'll get it after they are involuntarily retired.

Or imprisoned.

[SoonerPride]

6. No. There are still major cases for the court to decide.

And they won't release their rulings until after the election.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/supreme-court-won-t-rule-obamacare-election-day-declines-fast-n1119146

[procon]

5. Alito bears a long standing grudge against Obama

since the 2010 State of the Union address when he infamously mouthed the words "not true" after President Obama criticized the Supreme Court's campaign finance decision to allow unlimited amounts of money to alter our elections in favor of the wealthy few.

[Hortensis]

12. In 2006 Obama was one of the senators who opposed Alito's

homination as lacking the judicial temperament and other substance we need on the court. Alito's disgraceful political partisan and personally hostile behaviors since only prove Obama and the others were right.

Obama at the SOTU: “Last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limits in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.”

Alito’s pants-on-fire “not true” was a play to the TV cameras (huge no!) coinciding with to Obama’s statement claim that Citizens United opened the door to foreign influence in U.S. elections. As we know, it was dreadfully true. Thanks to the corruption of Alito and other justices, foreigners were now able to legally channel unlimited dark money to the Republican Party and other political groups/agents of their choice via CU.

[crickets]

13. +1

[Hortensis]

7. This is a comparatively minor case, and finding for would have

caused enormous problems for business and the nation. The conservative justices served business and the wealthy, including insurance companies (and incidentally us), by upholding this gold-standard precedent.

As said, far bigger threats to the ACA itself are on the docket.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

9. If they decide to throw the whole ACA overboard because of that crazy lawsuit

now sitting on their docket, Risk Corridors go down with the ship too, right? Why would they spare this now but then turn around and dump the whole thing anyway. Or is this just saying that the Risk Corridors are constitutionally permissible but if the whole thing goes down, eh whatever?

[Hortensis]

14. Risk corridors are a basic working concept of insurance

long before and independent of the ACA.

It not infrequently happens in our changing world that people and/or businesses really need to be able to insure something before actuaries have sufficient information to accurately assess the risks and set premiums. Sometimes the new development is so big and desirable that government steps in to guarantee "via risk corridors" that insurers won't take big losses if they guess wrong so whatever it is can proceed. Later, when adequate data are available, the government protection ends.

[Faux pas]

8. Kicketty Kickin'

[Grins]

10. "Strip search Sammy"!!

“Samuel Alito in a lonely dissent.”

What a waste of skin and blood.

[trixie2]

11. It's already been destroyed

The "new" healthcare.gov is a travesty.

[LiberalLovinLug]

15. "The Government should honor its obligations."

Something Republicans have no concept of.

[scarletwoman]

16. My understanding is that this only applies to payments already owed, not to upholding the structure

of the ACA in the future - is that correct?

[progree]

20. Good question. "The risk corridors were a temporary program, which expired after 2016"

But many insurers that were entitled to payments under the risk corridor program never received those payments — to the tune of about $12 billion — largely due to a Republican effort to undermine the program.

Beginning in 2013, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) began pushing for legislation to end the risk corridor payments. Eventually, Congress enacted a provision in its appropriations bills for 2014, 2015, and 2016 — known as a “rider” — seeking to prevent the federal government from making most of the payments it owes under the risk corridors program. The core issue in Maine Community is whether this rider actually cut off these payments.

... Though the rider prohibits money appropriated under these specific spending bills from being used to fund risk corridors, it does not prevent the government from making these payments from a different source of funds. And, as it turns out, there is another source of funds that the government can use to make the risk corridor payments — the “Judgment Fund,” which “pays court judgments and compromise settlements of lawsuits against the government.”

Much of Sotomayor’s opinion focuses on prior precedents establishing that courts should be very reluctant to read one federal law as implicitly eliminating an obligation laid out by another law. “Repeals by implication are not favored,” Sotomayor writes, quoting from a 1974 Supreme Court decision. When confronted with two laws that seem to pull in different directions, courts should “‘regard each as effective’—unless Congress’ intention to repeal is ‘clear and manifest.’”

Thus, because it is possible to read the rider narrowly, to still preserve the government’s original obligations under the risk corridor program, that rider should be read narrowly. The risk corridor program survives.

Anyway, it seems to affect nothing going forward, but rather past payments. And people shouldn't be reading this as an affirmation of the ACA.

[scarletwoman]

22. Thank you! I hadn't managed to read the whole thing, so I appreciate the additional excerpt.

"...people shouldn't be reading this as an affirmation of the ACA." Yes, that's what I thought.

Thanks again!

[rocktivity]

17. 8-1? And didn't I read something around here about a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling?

Yep, here it is...Maybe SCOTUS isn't that interested in being a Trump rubber stamp machine...

rocktivity

[Ford_Prefect]

18. "The Government should honor its obligations." "The Government should honor its obligations."

“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”
“The Government should honor its obligations.”

This needs to be repeated face to face to every GOP stooge and lackey in the House, The Senate, The State Legislatures, County Commissions, School Boards, County Sheriff and Police offices, and Business Associations.

If we have to sit on them to make them listen they must hear it.

[ailsagirl]

19. GOOD!!

[malaise]

21. This is huge

K & R