“The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld President Obama’s health reform law, affirming the centerpiece of the sweeping 2010 overhaul of the nation’s medical industries in a landmark 5-4 vote. The deciding opinion, written by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, held that the requirement that almost all Americans buy health insurance starting in 2014 or pay a penalty, does not violate the Constitution. The Court limited a massive expansion of Medicaid, the federal program that provides health care to the poor, but did not strike it down. That outcome validates the legacy achievement of Obama’s tenure, and puts the U.S. closer to near-universal health coverage than at any time in its history.
You can read a copy of the decision at the bottom of this story. Here are the likely winners and losers in the ruling’s aftermath.
Winners
The Obama Administration. Beyond the obvious matter of being able to move forward with a major set of policies the Democratic party has wanted for decades, the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval on the Affordable Care Act legitimizes Obama’s most visible and far-reaching domestic achievement. It also undercuts Republicans’ charge that the Obama Administration has consistently overreached its authority. The Supreme Court’s decision says the government’s insurance requirement is a tax with precedent. In addition, a vote from right-leaning Chief Justice John Roberts further seals the argument that the law, while politically explosive, is nonetheless constitutional.”
Read the rest of the article here: Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare in Landmark Decision
If the mandate is a tax, then that will eventually make your medical bills related to the taxing authority of the government.
What does that mean to all of us?
If for some reason we have to have medical costs that exceed our ability to pay, through insurance or out of pocket, we will owe those payments to the government!!!!!
GO OBAMA! GO GET THOSE POOR suckers, er 99%ers!
The bigger meaning is that if we can’t pay the bill, then we will not be able to include those costs in bankruptcy. Because, they have made the mandate a TAX!!!
So all of you that think this is a victory for the 99%, THINK AGAIN!!!
YOU WILL OWE THOSE MEDICAL BILLS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE AND YOUR CHILDRENS’ LIVES SINCE THE GOVERNMENT WILL GET YOUR HOME WHEN YOU ARE DEAD TO PAY OFF THOSE BILLS!!!!!!!!!!
There is a problem with what you say. That is that there is no enforcement mechanism for the tax. The IRS is not allowed to put a lien on your property. They are not allowed to attach your wages, or pursue any other collection method.
What happened is that the Democrats, being against the Republican created individual mandate in the first place, marked up the bill over time and pretty much removed the individual mandate.
So, even though there is an individual mandate in the law, in effect, there is no mandate.
The IRS is involved since it is the IRS that will be the gatekeepers of the mandate. It will be on your Form 1040.
When you get a tax credit for having insurance then the IRS will be able to attach any property you have in order to collect that credit back from you. This is the link to the federal government.
The IRS will get your property and then give it to the underwriter of the insurance company(the Government) that pays your medical bill.
The states already do this.
Now the federal government will get to be first in line to take your house and any other property you may have accumulated for your children.
Yes, the fine will be assessed on your taxes. But you don’t have to pay it. There is no enforcement for that. In fact, the bill specifically says, in relation to the mandate, the IRS can assess
Here is a view from the right: “Law professor and blogger Ann Althouse is just as puzzled as I am by the news that there is no enforcement mechanism for the individual mandate in the health care “law.””
Now, after this statement, the author goes into a conspiracy theory about why there is no enforcement mechanism in the law for the individual mandate. The fact is that if you refuse to pay it, there is no way to make you pay it.
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/016110.html
And here is the relevant part of the actual law: The Individual Mandate and Congress’s Powers to Tax
As an alternative to Commerce Clause authority for the individual mandate and penalty, the government also cites Congress’s broad powers “to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to… provide for the…general Welfare of the United States” (U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Sec. 8).
The tax argument is important for two reasons. First, as noted above, it is an alternative source of congressional authority to enact the individual mandate and penalty. Second, it provides the government with an argument that, under the Anti-Injunction Act, challenges to the individual mandate at this time are barred. The Anti-Injunction Act provides that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed.”
Two of the courts that have upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate did not find it necessary to consider Congress’s power to impose the individual mandate and penalty under its tax authority, as they had already found that Congress had full authority to act under the Commerce Clause. Neither of these courts, however, agreed with the government’s argument that suits were barred under the Anti-Injunction Act. In Thomas More Law Center v. Obama, Judge Steeh held that the government had no authority to apply the Anti-Injunction Act to bar a lawsuit when no attempt to collect had been taken by the IRS. And in Liberty University, Inc. v. Geithner, Judge Moon noted that not once in its “lengthy statutory findings” on the individual mandate “does Congress indicate that it was exercising its taxing authority to impose the penalties.” Concluding that exactions imposed for violating the individual mandate were better characterized as regulatory penalties, not taxes, Judge Moon held that the Anti-Injunction Act did not apply.
Three courts have explicitly ruled that the individual mandate and penalty are not authorized by Congress’s taxation powers. Judge Vinson has ruled that it is inarguably clear that Congress did not intend the penalty to be a tax, for the following reasons:
Language in earlier versions of the legislation that had described the penalty as a tax were stripped from the final version
Congress relied exclusively on the Commerce Clause authority for the individual mandate and penalty
The penalty was exempted from all traditional enforcement and collection methods (such as tax liens) used by the IRS
There was no mention of a revenue-generating purpose for the penalty
Judge Vinson noted that there may have been political reasons for Congress to avoid using the word “tax” to describe the penalty, but “Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial language by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an ‘Alice-in-Wonderland’ tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely” (see State of Florida v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, October 14, 2010 opinion).
Judge Hudson also held that Congress made a conscious choice in labeling the penalty imposed for failure to follow the individual mandate as a penalty rather than a tax. Citing Supreme Court precedent, Judge Hudson noted that “penalty” and “tax” are not synonymous, and something that is clearly a penalty “cannot be converted into a tax by the simple expedient of calling it such.” If something is a penalty, not a tax, it must be linked to an enumerated power of Congress other than the General Welfare clause, and Judge Hudson had already ruled that there was no valid link to Congress’s Commerce Clause authority (see Commonwealth of Virginia v. Sebelius).
Although Judge Kessler granted the government authority to enact the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause, she ruled that the government could find no such authority for enactment in the General Welfare clause’s taxing powers, agreeing with the other courts that Congress did not intend the penalty for noncompliance with the individual mandate to be a tax.
The SCOTUS has ruled the mandate as a tax. It will now be subject to enforcement as any other tax law. The Healthcare Bill will outline the means for enforcement. The parts that Pelosi says we will have to find out about after passing it. It will come out in 2013. Just wait and see. As far as all the legalease that you cited, it is not relevent to the new law, there is no precedent for this law, because it was just upheld this morning and it will go into effect in 2014. The bottom line is, if you are not an insurance card carrying member then you will be paying a price, which is yet to be determined. This is a new tax that will be assessed on the citizens of the USA by this administration, our supposed ally. The President and all his yes men told all of us that this is not a tax. Now the SCOTUS says it is a legally enforceable tax. When this all comes to light in 2013, I hope and pray(if that is OK to say) I am wrong and that you are right.
Of course it is okay to say. As long as you aren’t insulting someone else on the site, you can say pretty much anything you want to say.
Here is what I think is going on. I believe that there is no enforcement mechanism because they want the mandate to fail so we can go to single-payer, or Medicare for all, which in my opinion is where we should be anyway.
And I do hope I am correct as well.
P.S. thanks for reading and commenting on this blog.
Yes!!!!!! What a great decision! Now, who has eggs on their faces? hmmm??? I take back everything I have said about the SCOTUS. Almost.
Kay
Apparently you are less cynical than I. I see this decision as an attempt by the SCOTUS to show it is nonpartisan by making a political decision.
There have been too many partisan decisions in the past decade by this SC to have me believe any other way. Just last week, the SC handed down a decision that makes it harder for unions to spend money in elections. First, the SC opens the floodgates for corporations, who overwhelmingly support Republicans, to spend unlimited amounts of secret money in our elections, and then they tighten down the floodgates on unions, who overwhelmingly support Democrats. That was the 4th strictly partisan decision the SC has made since 2000. We are in the middle of a right wing coup in this country.
And yes, I am very happy that Obama was vindicated.
I just don’t trust the motives.