How to Protect Yourself From Obamacare

[Hoss]

Really?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/republicans-support-obamas-health-reforms--as-long-as-his-name-isnt-on-them/2012/06/25/gJQAq7E51V_blog.html

[heironymouspasparagus]

Really?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/republicans-support-obamas-health-reforms--as-long-as-his-name-isnt-on-them/2012/06/25/gJQAq7E51V_blog.html

That's because it was their position before Obama and the Dem's got it passed.  The Rep's just hope most people don't remember that inconvenient truth.

[carltonplace]

SCOTUS has reportedly struck down the individual mandate but redefined it as a tax

[guido911]

SCOTUS has reportedly struck down the individual mandate but redefined it as a tax

That's what I am hearing.

[Townsend]

SCOTUS has reportedly struck down the individual mandate but redefined it as a tax

Per an ABC FB post, they upheld it.  Apparently, per NBC, our state GOP has done nothing in its guidelines so I'm not sure what will happen here in Oklahoma.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/supreme-court-announces-decision-obamas-health-care-law/story?id=16663839#.T-xl5BfY92Aabcnew

In a landmark ruling with wide-ranging implications, the Supreme Court today upheld the so-called individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, the key part of President Obama's signature health care law.

The court ruled that the mandate is unconstitutional, but it can stay as part of Congress's power under a taxing clause. The court said that the government will be allowed to tax people for not having health insurance.

"The Affordable care act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably characterized as a tax. Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness," the court said in the ruling.

The high court kept the country in suspense for days, announcing at the beginning of the week that it would hand down its decision today.

The ruling will have immediate effects on the presidential race. Obama has called his health care law "the right thing to do," even as polling has determined that the law is unpopular. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, had vowed to repeal "ObamaCare" as soon as he became president, despite championing remarkably similar legislation as the governor of Massachusetts.

Even Karl Rove, the GOP uber-strategist who founded an outside spending group to defeat Obama in 2012, said the ruling helps Obama.


"If this is actually the decision, it's a boost for the president, but it doesn't make the controversy go away," Rove said on Fox News. "In fact, it probably enhances the controversy."

The Supreme Court also upheld a Medicaid expanstion, on narrow ground.

While just 36 percent of people in the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll had a favorable opinion of the health law, a similarly low number of people — 39 percent — had a favorable opinion of the health care system as it stands now. And while the GOP has trumpeted polling that shows Americans unsatisfied with the law as a whole, the White House has boasted of surveys that show that people are warmer to individual parts of the law, like letting young adults stay on their parents' plans until they're 26 and barring insurers from denying coverage to people with so-called pre-existing conditions.

In court, the government argued that the health care law was passed partly because in 2009, 50 million people lacked health insurance. Costs of the uninsured were spiraling out of control and were being shifted to those who are insured, doctors and insurance companies. And, people with so-called pre-existing conditions were being denied coverage. The law offered insurance reforms but mandated that almost every American buy health insurance by 2014.

The government said that Congress was well within its authority to pass the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution. As a secondary argument the government also said Congress had the authority to pass the mandate under its taxing authority.

Opponents — 26 states, an independent business group and two private citizens — said that while Congress has the authority to regulate interstate commerce, it doesn't have the power to require people to buy a product. The opponents argued that the claim of federal power was both "unprecedented and unbounded."

In March, the court devoted more than six hours of arguments to different aspects of the law.

[Townsend]

And Twitter just went ape-apples.

[carltonplace]

Sounds like it was very partisan with Cheif Justice Roberts flipping sides to support it with the more liberal members of the court.

[Townsend]

Oklahoma GOP leaders gambling on health care decision by Supreme Court

http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_news/oklahoma-gop-leaders-gambling-on-health-care-decision-by-supreme-court

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Because of bitter opposition to the new federal health care law in Oklahoma, state officials have done little to comply with it and instead are gambling that a key provision will be struck down Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts is expected to reveal the high court's verdict on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul shortly after 9 a.m.
The move is calculated — albeit risky — for Oklahoma's GOP leaders, who cited fears of a federal takeover of health care in declining to set up a state-run health insurance exchange. Should the law be upheld and the state doesn't create its own exchange by November, the state would automatically be absorbed into the federal system — the very thing they're fiercely trying to avoid.
"Like many states, Oklahoma has opted to see whether or not the federal health care law survives a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court before acting on an exchange," said Alex Weintz, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Mary Fallin. "The governor's hope is that the law is overturned, allowing states to pursue their own health care solutions that emphasize choice and free-market competition rather than being saddled with ineffective and costly mandates from the federal government."
But Weintz acknowledged Fallin has not decided how to proceed if the law is upheld, saying she plans to discuss those options after the ruling.
In a state that filed a federal lawsuit claiming the law is unconstitutional and where nearly 65 percent of the voters in 2010 favored a constitutional amendment that prohibits forced participation in a health care system, Republican lawmakers are clearly in no hurry to comply with the law.
The resistance to the new health care law was so fierce in Oklahoma that the Legislature rejected $54 million in federal money to set up the exchange, mostly because of fierce opposition from tea party activists and other conservatives who maintain the plan would inextricably link the state to new federal requirements. When lawmakers decided to study how the state could set up and fund its own health insurance exchange, conservative activists were so relentless in their opposition that the Legislature ultimately decided to do nothing.
"If the court rules for the individual mandate, we're going to be a little behind the curve and we'll have to be playing catch up," acknowledged Republican state Rep. Doug Cox, an emergency room physician from Grove who served on the legislative study committee. "I think what we're really betting on is the presidential election this fall."
But even if Republicans were to take back the White House and the Senate, states still face a November deadline for having an exchange plan in place.
Ironically, the Republican Legislature approved a bill to create a health insurance exchange in 2009 that was signed into law by former Democratic Gov. Brad Henry, but because of a budget crisis, there was never any money appropriated to fund its creation.
"At the time, that was seen as a very conservative idea," Cox said. "Since Obama got elected, it's gone from being a conservative idea to a liberal one."
By the next year, Cox said the federal health care law had become so politically toxic in a state where President Obama failed to win a single one of its 77 counties in 2008 that lawmakers were hesitant to support any proposal that could be linked to the federal health care law.
"That's exactly what's going on," Cox said. "It is the face of a president who is very disliked in Oklahoma."
And while Oklahoma has done little to prepare for the law being upheld, the state also has few options for dealing with the estimated 17 percent of Oklahomans without health insurance if the law is struck down, said Kevin Gordon, the president of Crowe & Dunlevy and chairman of the law firm's Health Care Litigation Practice Group.
About 625,000 Oklahomans, most of them adults, currently are uninsured, according to the latest figures from the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.
"We're also ill-prepared for the law to be overturned," Gordon said. "We're going to have challenges either way. If it's overturned, we still have the underlying problems with considerable increases in health insurance premiums over the next several years."
Gordon and Cox both said one option Oklahoma has for addressing the problem of those without health insurance is expanding the state's Insure Oklahoma program, which is administered by the Health Care Authority and supported by Fallin.
The program, which currently insures about 30,376 Oklahomans , is designed to bridge the gap in health care coverage for low-income workers by allowing premium costs to be shared by the state (60 percent), the employer (25 percent) and the employee (15 percent).
It also has an individual plan that allows self-employed or unemployed workers to buy health insurance directly from the state. The state portion of the program is funded through an increase in the sales tax on cigarettes that
was approved by Oklahoma voters in 2004

So oops?

[Townsend]

Sounds like it was very partisan with Cheif Justice Roberts flipping sides to support it with the more liberal members of the court.

I liked the guy saying "Scalia's head is going to explode."

[carltonplace]

Expect POTUS in front of the cameras in 3...2....1

[Townsend]

Expect POTUS in front of the cameras in 3...2....1

He's scheduled for an appearance later this morning.

I believe the GOP leaders are scheduled as soon as they figure out the best way to say "Obama's made the supreme court okay a huge tax on the American people".

[AquaMan]

He's scheduled for an appearance later this morning.

I believe the GOP leaders are scheduled as soon as they figure out the best way to say "Obama's made the supreme court okay a huge tax on the American people".

Romney has already commented after the announcement that the health care act is immoral. So, I guess Scotus is too.

[Conan71]

He's scheduled for an appearance later this morning.

Takes awhile to fit the halo on him and get it in just the right position.

[Townsend]

Takes awhile to fit the halo on him and get it in just the right position.

Cock it to the right.  Looks more dashing.

Is it something he can throw to fight the aliens?  Something like Wonder Woman's tiara.

[AquaMan]

Takes awhile to fit the halo on him and get it in just the right position.

Probably takes more makeup time to cover up the smirk.