WOW!! Federal judge in TX declares obamacare UNCONSTITUTIONAL

[Text Drivers are Killers]

It was unconstitutional when written since setting up a national health care system is NOT one of the listed powers of congress, though that's not the argument this judge is using.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama...004249710.html

dec 14 2018 (Bloomberg) -- Obamacare was struck down by a Texas federal judge in a ruling that casts uncertainty on insurance coverage for millions of U.S. residents.

The decision Friday finding the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional comes just before the end of a six-week open enrollment period for the program in 2019 and underscores a divide between Republicans who have long sought to invalidate the law and Democrats who fought to keep it in place.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth agreed with a coalition of Republican states led by Texas that he had to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act, the signature health-care overhaul by President Barack Obama, after Congress last year zeroed out a key provision -- the tax penalty for not complying with the requirement to buy insurance. The decision is almost certain to be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

Texas and an alliance of 19 states argued to the judge that they’ve been harmed by an increase in the number of people on state-supported insurance rolls. They claimed that when Congress repealed the tax penalty last year, it eliminated the U.S. Supreme Court’s rationale for finding the ACA constitutional in 2012.

The Texas judge agreed.

“The remainder of the ACA is non-severable from the individual mandate, meaning that the Act must be invalidated in whole,” O’Connor wrote.

[Jarod]

Yawn

[Irish Exit]

I don't see this as surviving the appeals process. It was the mandate that was unconstitutional. Provisions of law get deep sixed all the time without the entire act being killed off. The Voting Rights Act, for instance.

[jimmymccready]

Ziggy already started an OP, so close this one down, please.

And, as Judge Roberts said, when he heard about the decisions, "What a dumb fuck. We will overrule it."

[katzgar]

Medicare for all is coming down the pike

[distraff]

It was unconstitutional when written since setting up a national health care system is NOT one of the listed powers of congress, though that's not the argument this judge is using.

I personally agree with Justice Roberts that the fine in the Individual Mandate works as a tax, and I myself paid that fine/tax myself last year. It was just added to my April 15th bill. Also, the individual mandate has already been repealed by congress a few months ago, while the rest of the law has been kept in tact, so I don't see how striking down the mandate hurts the law any more than currently.

Personally, I am not a big fan of Obamacare, and while it is somewhat better than before, it didn't come close to fixing our healthcare system at all. If Obamacare is struck down, this will create such a political crisis with millions becoming uninsured and the loss of pre-existing conditions protections. I don't even know if congress can get a compromise together. I think this crisis will result in a Medicare for All solution to emerge in the early 2020s.

[countryboy]

Yawn

Yes yes, we know, playing a fake attorney from mommy's basement is very exhausting. Go get your beauty sleep Junior.

[artichoke]

Obamacare is blatantly unconstitutional on its face, as anyone with any remote understanding of the Founders or the Constitution could plainly see from the beginning, regardless of which judges thought what.

It is a matter of record that the Constitution was ratified as a strict, narrowly-defined enumeration of federal powers. Anything not specifically spelled out in it as a federal power is a federal power that does not exist, and that must be left to the state and local levels.

The Framers identified each Congressional power in Article I, Section 8 (why would they do this if the General Welfare and Commerce clauses granted Congress a blank check to do whatever it wants?), and even added the 10th Amendment to further clarify that this is all it is authorized to do.

When the Architect of the Constitution himself, James Madison, was confronted with an attempt to illegally expand federal powers (based on the deliberate misinterpretation of the General Welfare/Commerce clause that liberals now operate on) back in 1817, he responded by emphatically condemning it as a lawless attempt to shred our Founding document. He also explained that the Constitution would never have been ratified in the first place if anyone involved had mistaken it to mean something so broad.

He clarified that the powers of the federal government are “few and defined,” and that the rights of the states and The People were “numerous and indefinite.” He went on to explain that such baseless butchery of what was implemented by the Founders would render “the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would give the Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them.”

The General Welfare Clause was added to the Preamble merely to explain the purpose of this new Federal Government being created, and again to the Taxing and Spending Clause of Article I, Section 8, to enable Congress to raise funds for its authorized activities under the Constitution. This in no way changes what its authorized activities were.

[Nomad]

Damn!!!!

And here you are.... not on the Supreme Court, so your useless opinion doesn't mean jack shit.

Just a nobody yapping your big fat nobody yap on an obscure message board.

Damn!!!!

[Centerleftfl]

Idiot. You have ZERO idea what the judge actually "struck down" or didn't.

[artichoke]

Damn!!!!

And here you are.... not on the Supreme Court, so your useless opinion doesn't mean jack shit.

Just a nobody yapping your big fat nobody yap on an obscure message board.

Damn!!!!

Mindless insults. Next.

[Nomad]

Mindless insults. Next.

That's all your one-sided, bullshit interpretation deserves.

[artichoke]

I personally agree with Justice Roberts that the fine in the Individual Mandate works as a tax

Except, the text of Obamacare and the words of the people who pushed Obamacare on the public clearly identified their (blatantly illegal) penalty for not purchasing something that you don't want as just that...a penalty, while going out of their way to deny that it was a tax. You don't just get to make up whatever you feel like, and neither does the SCOTUS.

the rest of the law has been kept in tact

Wrong.

IT’S TIME TO TRULY TEST THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF OBAMACARE

The media sometimes claim the Supreme Court “upheld” Obamacare. In fact the court has addressed the constitutionality of only two of its parts: the Medicaid mandate on the states, which the court struck down; and the penalty on individuals for not purchasing health insurance, which Congress has since repealed. In another case, six justices rescued the measure from its own sloppy drafting, although not on constitutional grounds.

Even the Supreme Court’s decision sustaining the penalty was a very close call. The justices first ruled that the penalty exceeded congressional power under both the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause. They then held it to be a constitutionally-permissible “indirect tax,” but only by a 5-4 margin.

Another thing that makes Obamacare blatantly illegal, other than the fact that the Federal Government has no authorization under the Constitution to even be involved in health care in the first place...

In passing Obamacare, Congress violated the Constitution’s Origination Clause...The Origination Clause states that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.” With important modifications, the Origination Clause applied to Congress a legislative rule borrowed from the British Parliament and from several state legislatures.

The meaning of the Origination Clause as the founders understood it is as follows:

-Only a representative, not a senator, may introduce a tax bill.

-The bill must pass the House before going to the Senate.

-However, the Senate (unlike the British House of Lords) is not bound to simply accept or reject whatever the House passes. The Senate may “amend” tax bills before passing them.

-The House must approve any amendments.

-The Senate’s power to “amend” permits it to change the bill as to any subject matter it already covers. But adding new subject matter, such as adding regulations or appropriations to a pure revenue bill, is outside the scope of the Senate’s power to amend.

-The Senate created Obamacare by seizing a minor revenue bill that had passed the House, stripping out its contents, inserting new taxes (which it had the power to do), and adding some permanent appropriations and a Goldbergian regulatory scheme — which it had no power to do.

A purported “law” passed in violation of the Origination Clause is void.

If Obamacare is struck down, this will create such a political crisis with millions becoming uninsured and the loss of pre-existing conditions protections.

Don't illegally take over and destroy a system that more than 80% of Americans were happy with based entirely on an invented "crisis" and use it to lure people into maximum nanny state dependence...and it won't then hurt people to undo your illegal act.

[Loving91390]

My healthcare costs went from $400 month to NOW $1350 a month ....

I wish death upon Obama every time I write out my healthcare check !!!!

[artichoke]

That's all your one-sided, bullshit interpretation deserves.

Ah, the "it's your fault I can't reason or argue like an adult" excuse. Go eat your crayons and let the adults speak.