Supreme Court Upholds Nationwide Health Care Law Subsidies

[Belsnickel]

(06-25-2015, 01:40 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Curious if there are any libs who think this is a bad ruling.  Not outcome, but ruling.  The text is pretty straightforward, and we have this Gruber guy running around saying it was completely intentional.

I hope you mean not very straightforward, because that is what made this decision turn out the way it did, the language of the bill being contradictory. From what I understand of Roberts' opinion, the whole thing hinges on the phrase 'established by the State'. While the bill defines the state as one fo the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the language of the bill actually diverts from that definition at points, meaning that the definition can't be relied upon as one of the 50+1. In doing that, the ACA had to be looked at more broadly in a way to ascertain the intent of Congress, which Roberts says was for everyone receiving health insurance through an exchange, no matter the creator of said exchange, since without the subsidies the markets would not work at all. Roberts does make reference to judicial precedents in regards to his methodology here.

Scalia's dissent makes sense in some parts, but in others comes across more as sour grapes, and in some places very childish, not going to lie. I think the major part that he is neglecting in part of his dissent, and the part that I see as the sour grapes portion, is ignoring the definition of state that is the government, whether it be one of the 50+1 or the federal. He doesn't seem to want to admit that the federal government can fall within the words 'the state' by definition.

Anyway, I agree with Roberts in his opinion. I believe that what they are coming out on in the opinions we have been seeing is the intention behind the Congress what wrote this monstrosity. What I don't like is that we are have to rely on the SCOTUS to essentially edit this bill to a discernible law that works. Scalia had a remark that I found in the childish category, but it works: maybe we should start calling it SCOTUSCare.