Listening to the Supreme Court hearings on Obamacare. . .

I think this shows that bad oral arguments don't necessarily lose cases.

The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax. Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.

The Obama administration had argued that mandating that everyone in the country have insurance was constitutional under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That was the administration's "A argument," as Ari explained. The "B" argument was that the individual mandate was constitutional under the federal government's ability to tax. During debate in Congress and in the law itself, the mandate is called a "penalty." It was up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the penalty was indeed a tax.

On the Medicaid issue, a majority of the Court holds that the Medicaid expansion is constitutional but that it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to withhold Medicaid funds for non-compliance with the expansion provisions. Here is the quote: “Nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the ACA to expand the availability of health care, and requiring that states accepting such funds comply with the conditions on their use. What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.”

CNN and Fox News were left with egg on their faces on Thursday, as they got the Supreme Court's ruling on President Obama's health care law wrong.

The trouble started early for CNN. Congressional correspondent Kate Boulduan read out part of the Court's ruling, which said that the individual mandate could not be upheld using the Commerce Clause. Disastrously, though, it failed to pick up the other part of the ruling, which said that it could be upheld as a tax.

I think this shows that bad oral arguments don't necessarily lose cases.

The Government argues that the individual mandate can be sustained as a sort of exception to this rule [that Congress can't create commerce in order to regulate it], because health insurance is a unique product. According to the Government, upholding the individual mandate would not justify mandatory purchases of items such as cars or broccoli because, as the Government puts it, “[h]ealth insurance is not purchased for its own sake like a car or broccoli; it is a means of financing healthcare consumption and covering universal risks.” Reply Brief for United States 19. But cars and broccoli are no more purchased for their “own sake” than health insurance. They are purchased to cover the need for transportation and food.

I'm pleased as punch right now, when I think about all the hours that I spent arguing that this was indeed Constitutional, online. And when I think about the vehemence with which every elected Republican claimed this was unconstitutional.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I'm pleased as punch right now, when I think about all the hours that I spent arguing that this was indeed Constitutional, online. And when I think about the vehemence with which every elected Republican claimed this was unconstitutional.

Wait. As I understand it, it's unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause, but constitutional to impose it as a 'tax'.

Or, did I, as per usual, misunderstand AGAIN???

McGentrix wrote:

[Updated at 10:06 a.m. ET] In a landmark decision that will impact the nation for decades, the Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a key provision of President Barack Obama's health care law, ruling that requiring people to have health insurance violates the Constitution.

The most straightforward reading of the individual mandate is thatit commands individuals to purchase insurance. But, for the reasons explained, the Commerce Clause does not give Congress that power.It is therefore necessary to turn to the Government’s alternative argument: that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s power to “lay and collect Taxes.”Art. I, §8, cl. 1. In pressing its taxingpower argument, the Government asks the Court to view the mandate as imposing a tax on those who do not buy that product. Because “every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order tosave a statute from unconstitutionality,” Hooper v. California, 155
U. S. 648, 657, the question is whether it is “fairly possible” to intepret the mandate as imposing such a tax, Crowell v. Benson, 285
U. S. 22, 62. Pp. 31–32.r
4. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Part III–C, concluding that the individual mandate may beupheld as within Congress’s power under the Taxing Clause. Pp. 33–
44.

From what I am presently hearing though, if states don't comply with the Medicaid expansion, the federal government can't take their money away but I think they have to pay a penalty. I think.

Maybe not bad oral arguments, but definitely bad arguments.

The worst part of Verilli's performance was that he had no answer to the strongest Commerce-Clause challenge. He had no argument that clearing Obamacare under the Commerce Clause would not create unlimited federal powers. It now seems that the weakness of Verilli's oral argument goes back to his brief, and that it did cause Roberts to strike down the Commerce-Clause justification.