By JENNIFER HABERKORN
6/28/12 10:08 AM EDT
Updated: 6/28/12 11:10 AM EDT
The Supreme Court upheld most of President Barack Obama’s health care law Thursday, ruling that Congress did not overstep its power by requiring nearly all Americans to buy health insurance.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court’s four liberal justices in the ruling, which says Congress had the authority to impose the law’s individual mandate under Congress’s taxing power.
There was one rebuke to the Obama administration: The court ruled that the states can reject the law’s Medicaid expansion.
Still, the rest of the ruling is a surprise victory for the Obama administration, which faced a tough grilling from the court — including from Roberts — during the oral arguments in March. It guarantees that most of the two-year-old law will stay in place, avoiding the massive disruption to the health care industry that would have resulted if the mandate had been struck down.
“Simply put, Congress may tax and spend,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “This grant gives the federal government considerable influence even in areas where it cannot directly regulate.”
“The federal government may enact a tax on an activity that it cannot authorize, forbid or otherwise control,” Roberts wrote.
(See also: Full coverage of the health care reform decision)
In a stinging dissent, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested that the other justices wanted to wipe out the entire law. “In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety,” he wrote.
In the ruling, Roberts wrote that the court rejected the idea that the mandate regulates people under existing commercial activity. But the court ruled that Congress can impose mandate under the taxing power.
“It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce,” Roberts wrote.
“The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one,” Roberts wrote. “The government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the constitution. Granting the act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read.”
The ruling came as a surprise, as conservative justices appeared skeptical of the law during oral arguments in March. They seemed most skeptical of the so-called individual mandate, which requires Americans to have health insurance.
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Romney said Obama wasn’t sleeping well because he knew the COurt was going to throw out the health care law.
Well, Romney, you were wrong again. But don’t worry Mitt, you can change your opinion again since that seems the only way you operate.
FLIP-FLOPPER
The great thing about this decision is that California is going to expand Medical gung ho and other Western States will not as the Medicaid mandate was shot down. This will result in California attracting EVEN MORE low income folks here for benefits they can’t get in their former state and will make California an even larger welfare state than before.
Guaranteed that if Obamacare is not repealed, California will go from having 30% of the nations welfare cases to 40% by 2017. GUARANTEED!
The Tea Party was born because of the abomination known as Obamacare and the shenanigans employed to pass it. Recall all of those firey town halls? This was borne out in 2010 when anger over much of what the D’s were doing, primarily Obamacare, led to the Tea Party and Republicans flipping the House of Representatives and picking up seats in the Senate. The SCOTUS’s ruling just made them relevant again (for those who claim the Tea Party was over or losing power) and now gives people who might have been inclined to sit this election out because they are not sold on Romney a reason to vote. This ruling might be a short-term win for Obama, but it just became a much closer election. People will vote against Obama (rather than for Romney) much like Obama only won because people voted against GWB. The Republicans could take the presidency and both houses of congress. We’ll see.
More patients = more needing care in an already over crowded system. THis equates to those who pay too much already having to pay more to wait longer in line. It also equates to more doctors refusing medicare and medi-cal because reimbursement rates will drop. Which means even more lines and neglectful managed care from shoddy practitioners willing to go along with the government game. Think I will got to med school so I can make sure I can get care for myself.