Was Hoping SCOTUS Would Stick A Dagger Into Obamacare... quite the opposite, sadly

gwb-trading said:
I may not be a fan of Obamacare, however this is a court case effectively about the placement of the comma.

Anyone with common sense should realize the expected result is that the court would uphold the intent of the law as it was passed and not parse punctuation marks.
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That your reasoning is invariably sound has not been lost on me. You are such a rarity on ET. Your posts stand out, in a good way, among the mounds of crackpot refuge to be found here.

I too am not enamored with the ACA. I consider it deeply flawed, but better than what we had before. This ACA case seemed to be brought on a triviality, considering the unambiguous intent of the law. Had the ACA not played such a prominent role in recent U.S. politics, I would think the Court might have let the Appeals Court ruling stand and refused to hear the case.

I read the majority ruling in the Gay Marriage Case, and I read a substantial portion of Roberts Dissent. I must say the plaintiff's case was beautifully drafted. (Perhaps those same lawyers and clerks should have drafted the ACA!) Roberts long Dissent may be rather simply distilled down. It hinges heavily on sentiment and the definition of marriage having been left out of the Constitution and therefore being left to the States. Had the counter case, brought largely on Fourteenth Amendment, equal protection, grounds not been so elegantly argued and so powerfully supported by precedent, Justice Roberts might have prevailed. As it were, the equal protection arguments of the plaintiffs inundated the dissenters sentimental arguments under a tsunami of logic, underpinned by the Constitution, that no amount of reverence for the tradition of one man and one woman could hold back. In the end, no dissenter could make a credible argument based on harm suffered because of a marriage one disapproves us; without invoking indelicate, and unconstitutional arguments based of greed.

Both this ACA case and the Gay Marriage Issue are hugely important, but I don't find them judicially interesting because the outcomes were as expected. Had they been decided for the plaintiff in the former, or the defendant in the latter case, I guess I would have wondered what our Court Justices have been smoking. On the other hand, this ruling, on Texas Dept of Housing v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., et al., also handed down this week, is far more interesting, to me at least. (see: nytimes.com/2015/06/26/opinion/the-supreme-court-keeps-the-fair-housing-law-effective.html?_r=0)
 
What a difference one letter makes. I meant, of course, "refuse" , not "refuge". It's mounds of rubbish created by crackpots versus humped up crackpot safe havens. :eek:

Other Errata:
dissenters' not dissenters
disapproves of not disapproves us
 
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I was also expecting the supreme court to rule in Obamacares favour, solely because they didnt want to throw the insurance market into chaos, but lets be real, Dems specifically wrote the law that way to try to force republican states to comply, they didnt think republican states would turn down subsidies and then they didnt like the outcome and so they changed the law. Its a blatant lie to imply that that was a miswording in the law, many prominent dems were on camera threatining republican states with that very scenario where they wouldnt get subsidies, right after the law was written.

From a purely legal perspective it should have been an open and shut case, they wrote the law that way, they intended for the law to work that way, supreme court should have ruled against them, but there was no way in hell they were ever going to throw the insurance market into chaos like that.


piezoe said:
That your reasoning is invariably sound has not been lost on me. You are such a rarity on ET. Your posts stand out, in a good way, among the mounds of crackpot refuge to be found here.

I too am not enamored with the ACA. I consider it deeply flawed, but better than what we had before. This ACA case seemed to be brought on a triviality, considering the unambiguous intent of the law. Had the ACA not played such a prominent role in recent U.S. politics, I would think the Court might have let the Appeals Court ruling stand and refused to hear the case.

I read the majority ruling in the Gay Marriage Case, and I read a substantial portion of Roberts Dissent. I must say the plaintiff's case was beautifully drafted. (Perhaps those same lawyers and clerks should have drafted the ACA!) Roberts long Dissent may be rather simply distilled down. It hinges heavily on sentiment and the definition of marriage having been left out of the Constitution and therefore being left to the States. Had the counter case, brought largely on Fourteenth Amendment, equal protection, grounds not been so elegantly argued and so powerfully supported by precedent, Justice Roberts might have prevailed. As it were, the equal protection arguments of the plaintiffs inundated the dissenters sentimental arguments under a tsunami of logic, underpinned by the Constitution, that no amount of reverence for the tradition of one man and one woman could hold back. In the end, no dissenter could make a credible argument based on harm suffered because of a marriage one disapproves us; without invoking indelicate, and unconstitutional arguments based of greed.

Both this ACA case and the Gay Marriage Issue are hugely important, but I don't find them judicially interesting because the outcomes were as expected. Had they been decided for the plaintiff in the former, or the defendant in the latter case, I guess I would have wondered what our Court Justices have been smoking. On the other hand, this ruling, on Texas Dept of Housing v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., et al., also handed down this week, is far more interesting, to me at least. (see: nytimes.com/2015/06/26/opinion/the-supreme-court-keeps-the-fair-housing-law-effective.html?_r=0)
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Max E. Pad said:
I was also expecting the supreme court to rule in Obamacares favour, solely because they didnt want to throw the insurance market into chaos, but lets be real, Dems specifically wrote the law that way to try to force republican states to comply, they didnt think republican states would turn down subsidies and then they didnt like the outcome and so they changed the law. Its a blatant lie to imply that that was a miswording in the law, many prominent dems were on camera threatining republican states with that very scenario where they wouldnt get subsidies, right after the law was written.

From a purely legal perspective it should have been an open and shut case, they wrote the law that way, they intended for the law to work that way, supreme court should have ruled against them, but there was no way in hell they were ever going to throw the insurance market into chaos like that.
More...

There is already a nice Wiki summary up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_v._Burwell

This from Wiki, I would think, is key : (underlining is mine)

Citing FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp, the Court noted that "when deciding whether the language is plain, the Court must read the words 'in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.'"


When read in context, the phrase "an Exchange established by the State under [42 U. S. C. §18031]" is properly viewed as ambiguous. The phrase may be limited in its reach to State Exchanges. But it could also refer to all Exchanges—both State and Federal—for purposes of the tax credits. If a State chooses not to follow the directive in Section 18031 to establish an Exchange, the Act tells the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish "such Exchange." §18041. And by using the words "such Exchange," the Act indicates that State and Federal Exchanges should be the same. But State and Federal Exchanges would differ in a fundamental way if tax credits were available only on State Exchanges—one type of Exchange would help make insurance more affordable by providing billions of dollars to the States' citizens; the other type of Exchange would not.

With a private chuckle, I might also note that one of the cases the majority cited in support of their position was one for which Scalia wrote the Court opinion.
 
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