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  #2301  
Old 09-09-2017, 10:46 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

This is the most brazen act of Obamacare sabotage yet - Vox

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  #2302  
Old 09-17-2017, 09:43 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Hey Yanks:

Senate GOP tries one last time to repeal Obamacare - POLITICO
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  #2303  
Old 09-17-2017, 10:54 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

:airquote: last time :airquote:
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  #2304  
Old 09-20-2017, 08:46 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Jimmy Kimmel had an opinion.

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  #2305  
Old 09-22-2017, 11:22 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

John McCain has come out against the Graham-Cassidy fuckery, but I think the NY Times is jumping the gun a bit in describing the proposal as "likely doom[ed]."

There's three other GOP senators in the mix here, namely Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul. Two of the three must vote no, else the thing passes and the issue gets kicked to a House-Senate Conference Committee, which would have the unenviable job of trying to make a single piece of legislation out of Graham-Cassidy and the knobbish nonsense the House passed earlier this year.

Collins appears to me the most reliable no vote. She appears genuinely uninterested in dumping the ACA for the sake of dumping the ACA, which is about all Graham-Cassidy does.

Paul's stated opposition runs along the same lines as that of the lunatic "Freedom Caucus" in the House, i.e., Graham-Cassidy doesn't get us close enough to a Hobbesian state of nature. That's consistent with Paul's beloved lolbertarian rhetoric, but the rhetoric generally gives way when it clashes with GOP orthodoxy. Plus, Paul is crazy and kinda stupid, so anyone who counts on him for anything at all does so at his own peril.

The GOP remains convinced that Murkowski's vote can be bought. Back in July, Murkowski told Bloomberg that there's no point in trying to buy her off by placing Alaska-specific goodies in a repeal bill, since any proposal that's not viable nationwide would screw over her state just the same. That didn't stop the GOP from devising the "Kodiak Kickback," which ultimately failed.

The GOP leadership's takeway from the last round was not that Murkowski's vote on undoing the ACA is not for sale, but rather that they didn't offer enough last time. The current proposal, supposedly, involves letting Alaska keep the ACA.
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  #2306  
Old 09-23-2017, 12:17 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

I don't trust Paul, but assuming G-C fails, I suspect he picked the right positioning for his own career - opposing ACA, opposing G-C because it's not right-wing enough, but sparing Kentucky from devastating cuts to its healthcare system, as a state that expanded Medicaid and has had one of the best performing ACA marketplaces.

But that's what he said last time and he flip-flopped into McConnell's lap for very little.

The proposal to let Alaska keep Obamacare might not even be constitutional.

If Murkowski wants to run again, the fact is that she got elected vs. a Republican as a write-in in 2010, and against a strong Libertarian challenge from the same guy in 2016. She's not as beholden to the crazy GOP base as a result (a significant portion of her votes in 2010 and 2016 came from Begich and/or Obama voters). And she did get cheering crowds after killing the bill the first time. And she's not up until 2022, when the political climate and players could be totally different. Would Trump and McConnell be around? Would they or others still be trying to punish her for stopping Obamacare repeal? And if Trump was still around, history suggests the GOP would still be losing seats as they did in 2006, and the Democrats did in 2014. Hell, she might have a better chance in that scenario by switching to the Democratic Party or becoming an independent - Begich only lost by 2% in 2014, and that was a bad year for Democrats.

Which is to say that the political incentives probably push more against voting for the bill.

Question then is more whether she actually likes it enough to vote for it anyway.
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  #2307  
Old 09-26-2017, 11:07 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Huh.

Lindsey Graham Fights Back Tears Defending John McCain From Trump's Attacks | HuffPost

Quote:
“John if you’re listening ... nobody respects you more than I do.” Graham said during a CNN debate Monday night. “So to any American who’s got a problem with John McCain’s vote, all I can tell you is that John McCain was willing to die for this country, and he can vote any way he wants to, and it doesn’t matter to me in terms of friendship.”
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  #2308  
Old 09-26-2017, 06:33 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Lindsey knows his crush will never be requited, not the same way.
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  #2309  
Old 09-27-2017, 12:39 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Health Care Reform Reform Dead

The GOP's Latest Obamacare Repeal Bill Is Dead | HuffPost
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  #2310  
Old 09-28-2017, 12:39 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

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  #2311  
Old 10-12-2017, 06:41 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Trump signs order to eliminate ACA insurance rules, undermine marketplaces - The Washington Post

I'm sure this will fix all our health care woes, and nothing will get worse at all...
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  #2312  
Old 11-14-2017, 11:30 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

It won't fucking stay dead. Did someone forget the silver bullet and/or stake through the heart?

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  #2313  
Old 05-20-2018, 08:48 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

So about those death panels.

Frisco hospice exec admits overdosing patients 'to hasten their deaths' and make more money | Frisco | Dallas News

Oh.
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  #2314  
Old 02-24-2019, 01:31 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

So polling shows huge popular support for Medicare for All:
Quote:
The vast majority of Americans, 70 percent, now support Medicare-for-all, otherwise known as single-payer health care, according to a new Reuters survey. That includes 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans. Only 20 percent of Americans say they outright oppose the idea.
Popularity of an idea is not therefore an argument as to whether the idea is correct; though in this case I believe the argument for Medicare for All has solid footing, besides popular support.
So what to do?
Health Care and Insurance Industries Mobilize to Kill ‘Medicare for All’
Quote:
The hospital federation and two powerful lobbies, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, created a coalition last June to pre-empt what they saw as an alarming groundswell of interest in proposals to expand the federal role in health care.
"How can we stop an expansion of health care that threatens our vast private profits? With a huge propaganda campaign!" And what will that campaign argue?
Quote:
In a daily fusillade of digital advertising, videos and Twitter posts, the coalition, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, says that Medicare for all will require tax increases and give politicians and bureaucrats control of medical decisions now made by doctors and patients — arguments that echo those made to stop Medicare in the 1960s, Mrs. Clinton’s health plan in 1993 and the Affordable Care Act a decade ago.
Wow, that sounds slimy. Surely the Democratic party faithful, that see that 85% level of support within the party for Medicare for All wouldn't sign on to this odious mess?

Quote:
The name of the coalition is intentionally nondescript, and its executive director, Lauren Crawford Shaver, who led Mrs. Clinton’s efforts in 2016 to put marginal states into play, is cagey when asked for details. She says only that the group is planning “a big nationwide effort” with grass-roots allies.
Are those "grassroots allies" the 15% of the Democratic party that doesn't support Medicare for All?

Oh that's right, I forgot:
Hillary Clinton: Single-payer health care will "never, ever" happen
The Center-Right Democrat leadership thinks their job is to tell the voters what they can't have, and that message just coincidentally happens to totally be what the for-profit health care industry, big pharma, the banking industry, or any other rich donor wants.
Klobuchar so far has posited that Medicare for All isn't possible now, and isn't backing it, for example.

Again, popularity isn't enough, so let's talk merits:
Quote:
It’s true that single-payer supporters, myself included, often point to polls showing that 70 percent of Americans support single-payer. It’s always tempting to appeal with polls in advocating for a particular policy. But single-payer supporters don’t say we should have the policy because people support it; we believe it’s good, just, and more humane than our current nightmare, and that the conventional wisdom that it would be deeply unpopular is wrong.

Similarly, polls showing skepticism about some elements of single-payer don’t mean that you should abandon support. You don’t support everything polls say the public supports, nor do I think people like Hayes or Democrats in Congress think we should do that. People still support the death penalty for murder, for example. Does that mean Democrats should campaign on making it mandatory in every state? A majority of white Americans think white people face discrimination. Does that mean they’re right, or that we should enact policies to counteract anti-white discrimination? In both cases, it extremely does not. We acknowledge on some policies that the public needs to be moved but not on others. Why not on single-payer?

A vocal minority of people with employer-provided coverage they actually like doesn’t mean you should ignore what’s best for everyone. Yes, a 71 percent majority of people with employer-provided health insurance are happy with their coverage (at least according to the health insurers’ trade group); 49 percent of people in America have employer-provided insurance. Does that mean the millions of people for whom Medicare for All would mean gaining health coverage or paying thousands of dollars less for it don’t count? What about the 27 million uninsured people who would now have coverage? The 12 million who have to buy their insurance on the marketplace? What about the 55 million Medicare beneficiaries who would no longer have to pay premiums or drug costs? What about the 27 million part-time workers, or the 4.2 million people per month who leave or are fired from their job, whose health insurance would no longer be in peril? Do none of those people count because they’re not the better-off people lucky enough to have their employers pay for most of their premiums? Shouldn’t Democrats be the party that speaks for the people with less, not seeks to preserve the relatively privileged position of people with more?

But it’s worth addressing the policy matter, too: Why shouldn’t Democrats aim for a more popular and more achievable public option? Because it’ll end up being neither, because it might actually halt progress toward single-payer, instead of being an “on ramp,” and because it is an insufficient and immoral response to the current crisis of healthcare in America.
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  #2315  
Old 02-25-2019, 03:30 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

This is an interesting idea. Including the better parts below in case you guys have used up your quota of NYT free reads.

Quote:
A Better Path to Universal Health Care
The United States should look to Germany, not Canada, for the best model.

Germany offers a health insurance model that, like Canada’s, results in far less spending than in the United States, while achieving universal, comprehensive coverage. The difference is that Germany’s is a multipayer model, which builds more naturally on the American health insurance system.

Although it receives little attention in the United States, this model, pioneered by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1883, was the first social health insurance system in the world. It has since been copied across Europe and Asia, becoming far more common than the Canadian single-payer model. This model ensures that all citizens have access to affordable health care, but it also incorporates age-old American values of choice and private competition in health insurance.

Germans are required to have health insurance, but they can choose between more than 100 private nonprofit insurers called “sickness funds.” Workers and employers share the cost of insurance through payroll taxes, while the government finances coverage for children and the unemployed. Insurance plans are not tied to employers. Services are funded through progressive taxation, so access is based on need, not ability to pay, and financial contributions are based on wealth, not health. Contributions to sickness funds are centrally pooled and then allocated to individual insurers using a per-beneficiary formula that factors in differences in health risks.

The United States has the foundation for this kind of system. Its Social Security and Medicare systems use taxation to pay for social insurance policies, and the health care exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act provide marketplaces for insurance policies.

In an American version of this system, private insurers would have to be heavily regulated to ensure that coverage was affordable and to prevent the sort of rapid increases in premiums, deductibles and cost-sharing that have occurred over the past decade. Similar to regulations for Medicare and Medicaid, insurers would be required to provide a comprehensive set of benefits with limits on patient cost-sharing, which could be means-tested or tied to other criteria, such as having a chronic disease.

In Germany, for example, insurers can charge only small out-of-pocket fees limited to 2 percent or less of household income annually. Compared with the mostly fee-for-service, single-payer arrangements in Canada or the Medicare system, enrolling Americans in managed care plans paid on a per-patient basis would offer greater incentives to increase efficiency, improve quality of care and promote coordination of care.

Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and other countries with similar systems vastly underspend the United States. Americans may be concerned that lower spending reflects rationing of care, but research has consistently found that not to be the case. Other high-income countries spend less on health care than the United States because they have lower prices, not because they receive less care. In Germany, sickness funds leverage market power to secure lower prices, coming together regionally to negotiate contracts with doctors and hospitals, and nationally to negotiate drug prices.

Administrative and governance costs in multipayer systems are higher than in single-payer systems — 5 percent of health spending in Germany compared with 3 percent in Canada. But there is much room to cut prices. If, for example, insurers were able, on average, to achieve hospital and physician prices at the level of Medicare, and prescription drug prices at the level of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the savings would be significant...
And The Atlantic ran a similar story promoting the adoption of a German-style health care reform in the US back in 2014.
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  #2316  
Old 03-03-2019, 08:08 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

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  #2317  
Old 04-03-2019, 02:13 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

House Democrats on key committees receive funding from anti-single payer groups
Quote:
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), who has declined to hold any Medicare for All hearings, received $56,000 from partnership members — the most of any chairman of those committees. Notably, he received thousands more than committee chairmen who promised to hold Medicare for All hearings, jump-starting conversations about the future of health reform. Pallone did not respond to a request for comment.

But even co-sponsors of the Jayapal bill have received donations from partnership members. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), who is a co-sponsor, received $66,769 — more than any other member on the four committees.

The partnership has been waging a quiet war to shape the national conversation around single-payer health care and to ensure Medicare for All isn’t part of the Democratic Party platform in 2020.
A quiet war where they spend millions to make sure nothing threatens the status quo.

Quote:
The Federation of American Hospitals, America’s Health Insurance Plans, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America created the coalition last June. By August, when the Hill first reported the coalition’s formation, the partnership had 16 organizations. Today, nearly 30 organizations belong.

Of the partnership’s early members, 11 operate a PAC that donated more than $7.5 million to congressional candidates during the midterm elections, when the Medicare for All rallying cry was prevalent. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) received $27,500 from partnership members, but that’s far less than the $60,000 her Republican counterpart, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), received.
And who's on the arguing-against-expanding-health-care team, again?
Quote:
Lauren Crawford Shaver, executive director of the Partnership for America’s Future, who also served in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and as a health advisor in the Obama administration.

The statement to ThinkProgress echoes the group’s past talking points — but in reality, the partnership isn’t against only single-payer health care. It’s against any proposal to expand access to federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid. For example, earlier this year, the partnership opposed a modest bill that would allow people to buy into Medicare beginning at age 50.
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  #2318  
Old 04-03-2019, 06:09 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

If we had a sane system I think Pelosi would make an excellent member of the centrist party. Not even in a mean way but in a general factual way, she's a mainstream status quo capitalist who is happy to buy and be bought but still wants our country to survive and thus can't bring herself to be part of the country pillaging hatefest that is the republican party.

Unfortunately in the current world anyone not looking to actively stripmine and pawn off chunks of the country is automatically a democrat and socialist liberal.
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  #2319  
Old 04-10-2019, 10:36 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Wendell Primus, the Most Powerful Staffer in Congress, Represents a Generational Divide on the Left
Quote:
Primus serves as Pelosi’s sharp elbows, particularly on health policy. He is working directly with the Trump White House on watered-down drug-pricing legislation that differs from a bill favored by House liberals. And as The Intercept has reported, Primus reassured insurance executives last December, shortly after the Democratic takeover of the House, that party leadership would not favor a Medicare for All plan.

He also lashed out at Medicare for All on tape, at a little-noticed health care conference in Irvine, California, in February, homing in on regional differences in provider reimbursement rates as a signature obstacle. “The regional issues about transfers of money that were involved are enormous here and for that reason, I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said, adding that senior Democrats all agreed with him on this. Primus even cited a right-wing study about the costs of single payer, neglecting to mention that the same study found that it would reduce overall health expenditures.
Stakeholders, baby!
Quote:
Among other criticisms, Primus explained to insurers that “stakeholders are against” single payer, therefore leadership is too. This rationale for policy opposition — stakeholders are against virtually anything that would damage their interests, regardless of whether it benefits the public — represents Primus’s worldview in one phrase. You could call him the last of the loser liberals, desperate to maintain the last few scraps of the welfare state rather than forward anything more bold. The mindset views younger progressives as people to protect leadership from, and anti-government conservatives as people to bargain with. They strive not to make the world a better place, but to make it less bad than Republicans want.
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  #2320  
Old 04-11-2019, 12:40 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Is Wendell Primus one of those mecha bots?
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  #2321  
Old 04-23-2019, 05:39 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeP View Post
Is Wendell Primus one of those mecha bots?
Yup.

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  #2322  
Old 05-17-2019, 07:41 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Joe Biden Is Wrong. Businesses Will—and Want to—Pay for Medicare for All
Quote:
Earlier this week, former vice president and current presidential hopeful Joe Biden made one of the more unusual arguments against Medicare for All.

“Right now you have this … overwhelming number of employers who are paying into the health care plan. Why let them off the hook? All the sudden they don’t have to pay anything?”

I’m one of those employers, and I’m supportive of Medicare for All, but it’s not about being let off the hook. As the founder and CEO of a business that has always provided health care for our employees, MCS Industries, I’d rather pay a predictable, manageable payroll tax to finance health care than pay impossibly high and unpredictable premiums.

Last year, MCS, a company with 200 employees, paid over $2 million in insurance premiums. That cost is astronomical, and only expected to grow. In 2018, the average premium cost in America was $6,896 for single coverage and $19,616 for family coverage. Over 10 years, those costs have increased by 55% nationally. No business owner knows what their cost is going to be one year to the next, which makes it almost impossible to plan for long-term growth.

With rising costs, businesses have to get creative about how we manage our overhead. There’s a lot to consider: What are our employees health care needs? Are there enough in-network providers in the area? Do we offer family plans, vision, or dental? Most of us aren’t insurance or health care experts, and don’t have the expertise to easily navigate the complicated system.

Sometimes, to get costs under control, business owners need to switch plans or providers to lower premiums, which might mean higher deductibles or out-of-pocket costs for employees. That’s borne out in evidence: Employee deductibles have risen 212% over the last decade, raising out-of-pocket costs enough to negate wage increases.

Even if those corners do get cut, rising premiums always mean there’s less money for the things businesses actually want to do: raise wages; enter new markets, create new product lines, and hire new employees.

Medicare for All is about freeing up businesses and the middle class while reducing our national health care bill.
The author of this opinion piece in Fortune goes on to eloquently and concisely support Medicare for All and why business interests should as well. It's pitched for a targeted audience; I would have added in that it also means 28.5 million people- about 8.8% of people in this country who are currently uninsured, with an additional 87 million adults ages 19 to 64 inadequately insured- all those people would also have health care coverage, and that's a big win too!
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  #2323  
Old 05-18-2019, 04:54 AM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Dude. That's insane. Business ( :invisiblehand: ) should welcome MFA with the openest of arms. It lets them off the hook for a lot of bullshit that they no longer have to provide or pay for or even offer. There's still hefty price tags associated with a workman's compensation program. But the day to day bullshit can get foisted off on the employee.
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Old 07-09-2019, 03:52 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

As The Man reported here, after attempts at an outright repeal of the ACA as a whole or the individual mandate fizzled, the GOP-controlled Congress tried the next best thing--reducing the tax penalty for noncompliance with the ACA to $0.00. That succeeded. Thus, while the mandate remains on the books, it's entirely toothless.

That development prompted a coalition of 20 attorneys general from wingnut states to sue the government for the purpose of taking down the ACA in its entirety.

The plaintiffs in that lawsuit drew the perfect jurist in Judge Reed O'Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Back in 2012, SCOTUS upheld the individual mandate as a valid exercise of the taxing power conferred on Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Judge O'Connor essentially held that a tax of $0.00 is no tax at all, so the individual mandate is no longer a valid taxing power measure and is therefore unconstitutional. Relying heavily on statements the government made in the 2011-12 litigation, O'Connor took the next step and held that the individual mandate was essential to the entire ACA and was not severable from the rest of the Act. That meant the unconstitutionality of the mandate killed the entire ACA. O'Connor stayed his ruling pending appeal.

Oral argument in the appeal will take place this afternoon in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Pretty much no one expects O'Connor's ruling to hold up, but I've got no idea how this will turn out if it reaches the Supreme Court.
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Old 07-09-2019, 05:04 PM
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Default Re: Health Care Reform Dead

Putting here:

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