Listening to the Supreme Court hearings on Obamacare. . .

Apropos of opposing Obamacare: Are there any recent polls that distinguish between opponents who'd rather have Medicare for all, and opponents who don't want any universal healthcare on principle? Most pollsters shoehorn public opinion into this binary "oppose / support" format. I find that inadequate and frustrating.

Apropos of opposing Obamacare: Are there any recent polls that distinguish between opponents who'd rather have Medicare for all, and opponents who don't want any universal healthcare on principle? Most pollsters shoehorn public opinion into this binary "oppose / support" format. I find that inadequate and frustrating.

Perhaps I'm reading the ruling wrong, but my understanding is that the court did not in fact use the commerce clause to justify the legality of the mandate.

Cycloptichorn

The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part. The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax . .

I didn't see any explicit reference to it either. However, it seems to me that, by upholding the mandate, they implicitly affirmed that extention of the commerce clause. Perhaps this will remain a point for subsequent more explicit review.

It was an excruciating test for reporters who were handed a 59-page decision choked with legalese and asked to report its meaning almost instantly.

Bloomberg News and The Associated Press were the first reporting the news — correctly, at 10:07 a.m. EST — that the court upheld most of Obama's health care overhaul and a mandate that nearly every American have health insurance. They were followed by Reuters and the SCOTUSblog.

The New York Times made a point of tweeting that reporters and editors were analyzing the decision and would write when they were comfortable that the nuances were correct. The paper didn't tweet the news until 10:20 a.m.

CNN apologized for its error, saying it "regrets that it didn't wait to report out the full and complete opinion" that upheld the mandate requiring virtually all Americans to have health insurance. Fox, however, insisted it was right. "Fox reported the facts, as they came in," said network executive Michael Clemente.

If the noncompliance penalty is a tax, Obama did increase taxes on middle-class Americans.

What other statutes levy taxes for non-compliance? seems that all others levy "fines" or prison time.

The mandate can indeed be characterized as a tax, as the Court found. But it is not a massive tax hike on the middle class, much less the biggest tax hike in American history. The tax imposed by the individual mandate amounts to either $695 or 2.5 percent of household income for those who don’t have insurance and are not exempt based on income levels. By comparison, the payroll tax cut extension Republicans repeatedly blocked earlier this year would have added 3.1 percentage points to the tax and cost the average family $1,500 a year.

The mandate, meanwhile, would hit a small amount of Americans — somewhere between 2 and 5 percent — according to a study from the Urban Institute. The number could be even lower depending on the law’s success: in Massachusetts, the only state with an insurance mandate, less than 1 percent of the state’s residents paid the penalty in 2009.

Drudge Smears Justice Roberts Over His Seizures

In response to the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of health care reform, the Drudge Report is smearing Chief Justice John Roberts over the possibility that he might use epilepsy medication and suggesting that it affected his judgment.

Drudge linked to a Real Clear Politics post that contains a clip of right-wing radio host Michael Savage claiming that "if you look at Roberts' writings you can see the cognitive disassociation in what he is saying."

Roberts had a seizure in 2007, after suffering one 14 years earlier. The Washington Post reported this month that Roberts has not publicly addressed whether he has epilepsy.

Drudge also linked to a 2007 New York Times report that discussed Roberts' medical options. The article described the side effects of epilepsy drugs, but it has never been reported that Roberts actually takes such medication.

While I agree with you that Roberts did that, I don't really find it that interesting. Roberts merely applied a well-accepted principle of statutory construction: Courts should go out of their way to construe statutes so as to conflict with the constitution.

The “individual mandate”—the requirement that individuals either have health insurance coverage or pay a fine—is both the best known and the least popular component of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).1 That people know about the mandate—and may even worry about it—is not surprising, given both the heated political controversy and the constitutional challenge surrounding this provision of the law. What may be surprising, however, is that if the ACA were in effect today, 94 percent of the total population (93 percent of the nonelderly population) or 250.3 million people out of 268.8 million nonelderly people—would not face a requirement to newly purchase insurance or pay a fine.

How will this penalty/tax be imposed/levied?

What may be surprising, however, is that if the ACA were in effect today, 94 percent of the total population (93 percent of the nonelderly population) or 250.3 million people out of 268.8 million nonelderly people—would not face a requirement to newly purchase insurance or pay a fine.

So group of people who a) don't have insurance and b) don't want insurance is really quite small.

Thomas wrote:

While I agree with you that Roberts did that, I don't really find it that interesting. Roberts merely applied a well-accepted principle of statutory construction: Courts should go out of their way to construe statutes so as to conflict with the constitution.

While I agree that modern conservative jurisprudence tends toward this result in practice, I'm confident that the goal is to construe statutes so that they conform with the constitution.