The GOP needs to fucking swallow its pride and remember that not only was this law the idea of its most cherished conservative think tank, but the GOP governor who actually enacted this kind of law before everyone else became their nominee for president.
The GOP, lol.
The same folks who demonized teenage motherhood.
But flipped their views when Palin’s teenage daughter became pregnant…
No it is not. There are plenty of places in the law which make no sense if the four words in question were interpreted literally.
It is pretty much a typo. If a law is passed requiring ”lice in prison“ but has parts dealing with living quarters and food and counting how many people are in prison, criminals are not released into cells with insects dumped on their heads.
I don’t think I’ve read a reputable law opinion that said the literal meaning would pass.(aside from certain judges…)
As I think mentioned on the slate article, not only did they not use the Chevron test which would leave gop president wiggle room but they used the stronger argument/judgement saying aca was law that had to repealed by Congress if the gop wanted to change it.
For the new American right, the judicial activism charge now applies to any ruling they oppose. It’s the same principle that makes anything proposed by Obama socialism. The original meaning of the phrase is completely lost.
Being unable to forsake rationality and empirical evidence is the very definition of super left wing liberal communist these days. Which is why everyone hates the GOP so much.
Scalia said the law should be called SCOTUScare! Roberts laughed when he said that.
What is so annoying about the Republicans is that in all these years since the ACA became law they have never once proposed an alternative. Instead the House wastes time by continuing to vote to repeal it, over 50 times now.
These Presidential candidates need to toss out some ideas for reforming the law rather than simply condemning it.
Yeah, that’s why i like arguing with you ;P…
But I have a serious question, have you considered what your opinion would be had you not personally met people who benefited by this policy? I find people (and I am definitely not excluding myself here) even when they value empirical evidence, tend not to see it unless they experience it personally (it easier to dismiss printed evidence in a field not of your expertise). That is, evidence is perceived as political spin unless you can’t dismiss it due to either expertise (you know it’s solid evidence) or personal experience…
Sadly I think this dynamic structures a lot of political discussion, this one included, with most people opposing the system being people who can pay private health care anyway, and that are less likely to know beneficiaries personally.
This American Life has a great episode about how one group changed people’s opinion (and it stuck!) on gay marriage. Instead of throwing talking points at people, they had canvassers slip in personal stories about their own challenges. As they talked, the person being interviewed would slowly come around. Putting a face on the issue is what made the difference.
Unfortunately, the enterprise proved too costly for it to become an established part of the normal political process.
If I did not know anyone who had benefited from it, I may be less supportive of it, but I don’t believe I would be as antagonistic towards it as some of the extreme right wingers.
I might doubt its utility, but I wouldn’t actually think it was making stuff worse… because there does not seem to be any evidence that it is, despite people looking SO HARD to find such evidence.
I may just fault it for failing to address actual healthcare cost increases, which I still feel is the biggest issue we need to deal with.
Chief Justice Roberts himself acknowledged that the language was clear.
This New York Post article is in line with my thoughts and comments.
@Telefrog–I’ve got some bad news for you on that This American Life story. There was a whole academic scandal about that data.
Roberts writes, “If the statutory language is plain, we must enforce it according to its terms. But oftentimes” — and here he quotes an earlier Supreme Court decision — “’the ‘meaning — or ambiguity — of certain words or phrases may only become evident when placed in context.’”
IF plain enforce literally. But if NOT plain in context, do not enforce literally.
Roberts voted to not enforce literally. Sure he said it was plain, but in context of the rest of his words…
Also:
The Lice in prison bill. Are we in fact supposed to be dumping insects on prisoner heads after all?
The easiest way to think about it is this:
Literally ZERO people who voted for the bill in congress believed that it was supposed to be interpretted as the plaintiffs in this case suggested.
Not figuratively, but LITERALLY zero of those who voted for the bill thought it was supposed to work that way.
So it would be absolutely absurd for the court to enforce such an interpretation, as that would clearly be judicial activism, intentionally warping a law to reflect something which was clearly the opposite of what Congress intended that law to convey.
How can you back that up at all when you have Jonathan Gruber explicitly saying that the whole purpose of not giving subsidies on the Federal exchange was to force the states to create their own exchange (i.e. force Republican governors to implement to the bill and mitigate the political heat)?
At least one person thought so, and that was the guy who designed/“wrote” the bill.
Because he’s not a legislator, he stated what he said was factually incorrect, he was paid half a million dollars to provide a economic model that was the basis of the aca’s numbers that included federal subsidies from federal exchanges, and he wrote a fucking book on obamacare in which he made no differentiation between subsidies for state and federal exchanges.
If this lack of subsidies was a threat, a doomsday device for states markets, then why was every federal and state official when asked about the threat, looked to one another with confused “what?” faces when informed about the possible loss of subsidies?
The whole point of a doomsday device is lost if you keep it a secret. Why didn’t they tell the world, eh?
How can you back that up at all when you have Jonathan Gruber explicitly saying that the whole purpose of not giving subsidies on the Federal exchange was to force the states to create their own exchange (i.e. force Republican governors to implement to the bill and mitigate the political heat)?
Well, the easiest way to deal with that suggestion is that Gruber didn’t actually vote on the bill.
What matters is what those who VOTED on the bill actually thought when they were voting on it.
Boooooo!
Yeah, didn’t you hear about that? I think arstechnica did a story on it a few weeks back.
If what they thought mattered, most laws would mean nothing. I’m not just being snarky. Most legislators don’t bother reading the bills they vote on. The intent the courts wind up trying to decipher is usually that of the legislative aides who actually draft the bills. And given the especially rushed and confusing nature of the way the ACA was enacted (remember reconciliation and “We have to pass it so you’ll know what’s in it”?) you can be sure that the vast majority of those who voted on this law weren’t even aware of this provision.
That’s exactly my point (and the point of the majority decision). It makes no sense to interpret the law in a manner which clearly flies in the face of how every single person voting for the law interpreted it.