The role of the courts is to interpret the law. Unfortunately, legal language is frequently ambiguous, including the use of “State” in the ACA. As pointed out above, it’s entirely possible that “State” means “government”, as in “Secretary of State”.
The courts are supposed to do their best with what they’ve got. If they threw every sloppy law back to the legislature and voided any contract with a hint of ambiguity, the legal system would grind to a halt.
Reading Justice Scalia’s opinions is always a kick. I’ve really got to find a way to integrate “jiggery-pokery” into my daily vocabulary.
Yeah, I guess it goes back to the different philosophies of how to interpet law. Literalism, “living document”, etc. I can understand wanting to interpret it in such a way that won’t contradict/destroy it’s impact. I guess I would prefer the Courts give Congress less leeway, rather than more. Make them fix the legislation to be more explicit. “Never trust a politician”.
And triggercut, to respond to your pithy jab, I did actually go with private health insurance (at a much higher cost) to avoid using the Exchange. Because while I appreciate the intent, I don’t agree with the law. Guess what happened? Somehow, the Exchange got all my (and my family’s) personal/medical information anyway.
Part of the problem, is that Congress passes huge laws full of loop holes (intentional or otherwise) with a great deal of contraditions and the majority decisions has all kinds of criticism of this. Additionally, the SC signaled to Congress multiple times that the preferred outcome would be for Congress to use the huge amount of time between this case coming up and the SC decision to actually just go in and amend the law to be clear. That’s the whole hole in any argument that the SC is ‘rewriting’ or ‘making up’ the law. Congress had the power to change or clarify that law. Congress still has the power to change that law by simply passing an updated or new version. Congress is just incompetent.
For jiggery-pokery at its finest, read Scalia’s opinion for the Court in [i]District of Columbia v. Heller[/i]. He manages to read the prefatory clause to the 2nd Amendment right out of the Constitution.
I think Carly Simon wrote a song about you.
This doesn’t make any sense to me…
All the insurance sold on the exchange is private health insurance.
It sounds like what you’re saying here is that you intentionally fucked yourself and paid more than you had to, because of “reasons”.
A fun round-up of conservative heads popping: http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/06/25/the-end-of-america-as-we-know-it-conservative-m/204135
Mmmmmm, delicious.
Wait until they find out that you can’t get out of a speeding ticket just because the officer misspelled your name or put the wrong date on the citation. Instead, a judge will amend your ticket right in front of you.
Banana republic! Words don’t mean anything!
Some of those quotes are fabulous.
It’s interesting seeing the far right get all lathered up over John Roberts - calling him a “Scumbag” and a “Disgrace” - because he was appointed by GWB but has proved to a very moderate sort of conservative. I guess it really sucks when the SCOUTS-nomination/confirmation process works the way it was intended instead of the way you’d prefer it to.
I’d actually give Bush the benefit of the doubt and say that he nominated someone who reflected the majority of American’s views to be chief justice… except that he later nominated Meirs, so it might just be that we got lucky.
A useful sports metaphor to explain a useless argument:
It’s next year’s Super Bowl game, and with seconds to go and his team trailing by four points, Tom Brady, quarterback of the New England Patriots, lofts a properly inflated football into the end zone, toward a receiver who is being closely covered by a Detroit Lions’ defensive back. (This scenario is obviously a fantasy.) The back bumps the receiver slightly as the two players fight for position, and the ball bounces off the receiver’s fingertips before falling to the turf.
New England fans howl in anger, claiming that, “according to the rules,” the receiver was interfered with. Detroit fans respond calmly that such marginal contact is almost never considered pass interference by officials, because, given the nature of NFL football, such a hyper-literal interpretation of the rules would lead to pass interference being called dozens of times in every game, which would ruin the sport.
This scenario is a good metaphor for the outcome of King v. Burwell. In terms of ordinary statutory construction, this would be an easy case to decide – or, more accurately, there would be no case to decide, because the drafting error that created the opportunity for the plaintiffs to sue would either have gone unnoticed, or would have been fixed by subsequent legislative action.
But because this case was the legal equivalent of a game-deciding play at the end of the Super Bowl, the ordinary rules of statutory interpretation got tossed out the window for much of the litigation process. People opposed to the Affordable Care Act became the equivalent of New England fans outraged about the failure to call pass interference, claiming that the “rules” required the Supreme Court to impose a hyper-literal interpretation of one (in Chief Justice Roberts’ words) “inartfully drafted” phrase in a many-thousand word statute, even though such an interpretation would produce a result that literally no one who voted for the law desired, and which would have wrecked the entire statutory scheme.
Maybe my explanation was poor. We elected to buy non-exchange coverage with no subsidy, because we disagreed with the law. Or “reasons” I guess. I’m not trying to start an argument, I just get annoyed when people throw out one-liners to attack the messenger: “cancel your insurance to protest”. Can’t we tolerate each other’s different opinions enough to at least have an enjoyable debate?
Trigger: sorry, I’m dumb. You’ll have to explain that reference to me.
Fox’s Karl Rove: Health Care Decision Is “An Act Of Judicial Activism.”
This seems kind of ridiculous.
I mean, upholding a law PASSED BY CONGRESS is clearly not activism. It’s clearly the opposite, as it’s basically merely yielding to the authority of the legislative branch to do what they are supposed to do.
Overruling congress, and removing the ACA because you don’t think the law is right, that would be activism.
Maybe my explanation was poor. We elected to buy non-exchange coverage with no subsidy, because we disagreed with the law. Or “reasons” I guess. I’m not trying to start an argument, I just get annoyed when people throw out one-liners to attack the messenger: “cancel your insurance to protest”. Can’t we tolerate each other’s different opinions enough to at least have an enjoyable debate?
You’re right, there’s no reason to attack you over this.
However, it still seems weird to me. Principled perhaps, but strange. I mean, the insurance you buy through the exchange is the same insurance sold by the same companies. So it seems difficult to justify actively going out of your way to pay more than you have to, for the same product. The capitalist in me sees that as somewhat abhorrent.
Responses from folks who don’t need help with their insurance payments.
Almost hard to read.
Limbaugh: Health Care Decision Is “An Absolute Disaster.” Rush Limbaugh lamented that the Supreme Court’s decision was “an absolute disaster” and wondered “what does [this] mean for the rule of law?” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 6/25/15]
I really dislike Rush Limbaugh.
Has there ever been a court case where the losing side didn’t cry “Activism!”? Such a dumb response.
It’s a valid question though. Surely this decision means that in short order we’ll all be trapped in our houses as gangs of well-insured ruffians roam the streets looking for innocents to turn gay.
Damn. Some of these border on parody.
I get it, kinda. If you were opposed to ACA, this decision really messed up a lot of the opposing strategies to fight it. Still, I don’t really understand how this is a shocker. It seemed pretty obvious that the Court would have to rule for upholding the mechanics of the law over the limited meaning of one word in the text.
This does more than just mess things up for anti-ACA-ers. The decision actually makes things worse than they were before for them. Slate explains it here.
The thing is, opposition to the ACA at this point is ultimately irrational.
I was not a supporter of it originally. I didn’t like how vague the law was described by congress, I didn’t really like the fact that it ultimately failed to address the real issue we have of healtcare cost increases… I did not feel it was a good move.
But at this point, IT CLEARLY HAS IMPROVED THINGS. I know people, personally, who have had their lives DRAMATICALLY improved by the ACA. Like, basically saved their lives. And I know ZERO people who can present legitimate arguments of how it has hurt them. I say legitimate because there certainly are folks who seemingly imagine that they are being hurt, but can never point to concrete descriptions of exactly how… or end up thinking that they are being hurt, but are actually being helped, by the ACA.
So it’s like… yeah, the ACA was probably a tremendously flawed law in a ton of ways. Other laws really do need to be made to fix things further. But things are better than they were.
And as such, you cannot possibly repeal it unless you have an absolutely concrete plan to put in its place, and it has to be demonstrably better… and it has to go into effect the exact moment you repeat the ACA. You can’t just be like, “I’m gonna repeal the ACA and then… uh… fix it. With things. Later.” No man, fuck that.
But that’s where the primary opposition is at this point, and it’s nonsense bullshit.
And let’s be clear here… Everyone here knows that I am certainly not some super left wing liberal communist. Quite the contrary. But I cannot forsake rationality and empirical evidence for the sake of ideology. Because that is fucking retarded.