5534

Well that sounds like something Scalia wrote, but folks here don’t like him.

However, if bad dudes take power, and the Constitution no longer provides protection, then it doesn’t seem like you’ll have any way to exercise your Democratic processes anymore.

I feel like judicial review has worked pretty well for the past few hundred years… Maybe shouldn’t throw it away.

5535

I don’t want to throw it away either- but these tools are the constitutional remedy to a court that has overstepped its bounds.

That’s how I think Dems should frame this- say they’re reigning in activist judges who are redefining the Constitution to suit unpopular political ends.

5536

Sounds more like a feature than a bug. We need to go back to when politicians had to run for election on the laws they supported and voted for rather than relying on unelected judges to take away most of their difficult choices.

5537

Exercising your right to vote is largely a matter of state law, and this method only works for federal laws.

But what if Congress tried to use federal laws to interfere with state laws? Well, it turns out that one of the few situations when the SCOTUS has original jurisdiction (ie cannot be stripped of judicial review) is when a state sues the federal government.

5538

Well, like i said, Scalia made the same argument at least once that in aware of. That the courts shouldn’t be deciding these kinds of society changing issues. That instead, society should come to an agreement of how things should be, because such a change would be more long lasting and less contentious.

I.e., instead of the court saying that states can’t outlaw abortion, the states should come to that conclusion on their own, via the majority of people agreeing with that position.

But such a world will likely change much more slowly.

5539

I’d like to remind everyone, that every state has insurance commission of some form. Their job is to regulate insurance within their state. This means that insurance companies have to present any changes in policies (health, life, auto etc) in the both the terms and their prices to the commission and get their approval.

If ACA is over turned it doesn’t mean that insurance companies can arbitrarily say, we can ignore pre conditions. This is only true if the state insurance commission allows it to happen. In many state, the Insurance commissioner is an elected office. An election that is generally ignored. If there is election for the insurance commissioner in your state, raise its visibility.

If you live in blue state I would expect either the insurance commission and/or the state regulators would past legislation keep all or most of the ACA provision intact. A good question to ask your local legislators.

5540

Or, you know, not at all. Imagine an America in which we simply waited for the good white people of the south to decide they ought to give up Jim Crow laws of their own accord.

I mean, we don’t have to imagine what insurance commissions and insurance companies will do. We need only look at what they were doing before the ACA was enacted. It isn’t a mystery. They will ban or restrict coverage for pre-existing conditions.

5541

Also, I recall that insurance companies would just take their ball and go home if they didn’t get what they want. So if there’s a state post-ACA that does not allow the companies to write the kind of policies they want, they’ll just stop offering insurance in that state.

5542

Some will, but not many. It is easy not to cover pre-conditions, when in the all but a few states that was the norm. It has been the law of the land for a number of years now and its unlikely that people even in red states will put up with so the pressure on commissioners will be huge.

It is hard to imagine a united health care, or a Kaiser just walking away from large chunks of business, and obviously regional healthcare insurance companies are pretty much stuck in their region in for the medium -term.

It looks like roughly a 1/3 of the state have already passed or are working on pre-existing conditions. Will this help if you are in Alabama or Florida under DeSantis no but…

5543

No brainer here. GOP/ Trump partiers like to talk about it, but they want no part in actually doing it.

5544

One assumes that the GOP knows what happens when abortion ceases to be a live issue, and it’s probably not great overall for them.

5545

Once again, overturning Roe v. Wade is just the start of the battle for the hard right. It then becomes a two-pronged attack: battles at the state level everywhere, and a Federal anti-abortion law that penalizes doctors and women.

It will never cease to be a “live issue” until the US is literally Gilead from Handmaid’s Tale. Because make no mistake: that’s the vision.

5546

No doubt, for the true believers.

But there is a tranche of lower-income and younger Republicans who are quite a bit more economically liberal than your average Republican who can be gotten if certain hot-button social issues become less hot, abortion being the big daddy.

5547

Exactly. So a state like California may be able to do that but a state like Oregon, or worse, Montana or Wyoming, not so much. Health insurance needs national regulation.

5548

No, the only hot-button social issue that really matters to today’s Republican party is patriarchal White supremacy. It’s the Continental Divide of US politics; everything else flows from your attitude towards that.

5549

I think that description is a dramatic oversimplification of complex social issues, in an attempt to paint your ideological opponents in a specifically negative light, and it doesn’t really do much to improve things.

5550

You’re right. It’s really white supremacy and misogyny.

5551

Antlers has convinced me.

5552

Can we fit in accelerating the sixth extinction somewhere in there?

5553

Of all the institutions in America under attack by this President, the Supreme Court is the one I worry least about.

At the end of the day, Supreme Court justices are judges first and political partisans second.

The notion that a Barrett appointment will mean the invalidation of the Affordable Care Act is even more far-fetched. True, a case seeking the ACA’s end has reached the Supreme Court and will be decided in the coming term. But most legal observers — even conservatives with no affection for Obamacare — think the legal basis for the challenge is laughably weak, and wonder if even one justice (let alone five) will buy it.