Chief Justice Roberts saves Obamacare!

[DinoDoc]

However, the House did pass a very similar bill beforehand.

So what? The House bill you refer to was rejected by the Senate in favor of its own new version.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So bring a suit yourself. The plaintiffs didn't argue that point.

[DinoDoc]

Congress didn't make the tax argument either.

[Imran Siddiqui]

But the Administration did in its defense

[DinoDoc]

Yes, and the Roberts felt so convinced by the argument that he felt it necessary to rewrite the statute and ignore legislative intent in order to support it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

No one except Scalia really cares about legislative intent.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Wait, not even there, I guess:

The meaning of terms on the statute books ought to be determined, not on the basis of which meaning can be shown to have been understood by a larger handful of the Members of Congress; but rather on the basis of which meaning is (1) most in accord with context and ordinary usage, and thus most likely to have been understood by the whole Congress which voted on the words of the statute (not to mention the citizens subject to it), and (2) most compatible with the surrounding body of law into which the provision must be integrated-a compatibility which, by a benign fiction, we assume Congress always has in mind. I would not permit any of the historical and legislative material discussed by the Court, or all of it combined, to lead me to a result different from the one that these factors suggest.

- Justice Scalia

[Wiglaf]

Er, Scalia doesn't care about legislative intent, at all..

Yes, and the Roberts felt so convinced by the argument that he felt it necessary to rewrite the statute

Didn't really rewrite it..

[DinoDoc]

No one except Scalia really cares about legislative intent.

Yes, and the Roberts felt so convinced by the argument that he felt it necessary to rewrite the statute ... in order to support it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I concede on Scalia, but as Wiggy said... Roberts didn't really rewrite it but actually looked to 5000A's practical effects (esp considering the penalty would be handled like other tax penalties to the IRS).

[DinoDoc]

Didn't really rewrite it..

Ok, I'll bite. I'm willing to admit error in as much as I was unaware the law referred to the tax as such before the decision was handed down.

[Wiglaf]

I'm not sure what that means?

[DinoDoc]

I'm not sure what that means?

From the dissent:

The Court today decides to save a statute Congress did not write. It rules that what the statute declares to be a requirement with a penalty is instead an option subject to a tax. And it changes the intentionally coercive sanction of a total cut-off of Medicaid funds to a supposedly noncoercive cut-off of only the incremental funds that the Act makes available.

[Wiglaf]

Yeah I just find that to be really unpersuasive. Is the idea that the whole multibillion dollar law should be totally thrown out because congress mislabled a tax as a penalty??

In the big picture isn't throwing out a whole law in effect rewriting it as well, except just rewriting it to say "nothing to see here, suck a big one aammerica"?


Answer: yes, that is why all justices have an obligation to find constitutionality in all laws wherever they see it, even if congressmen, most of whom are retarded, does not make its case well and misuses words

The bigger question of whether this thing even works as a tax is something you can debate, but the justices didn't really do this, unfortunately..

[MrFun]

I think this is a good video to educate Americans about the new healthcare reforms, and how it will work and how much it will cost.