General News Obamacare upheld by Supreme Court 6-3 Ruling

I take it the Republicans are going to be incredibly salty about this?

EDIT: There's a Republican from Louisiana (Bill Cassidy) on Fox right now, he mad.

 

Good. This was an incredibly stupid challenge.

 

^ Exactly this. =)

 

Good. This was an asinine challenge to the law (basically trying to appeal the law over a four word typo/misunderstanding). I wonder what Republicans will try to say next? Is access to healthcare itself unconstitutional?

 

This is great news for Obama, Democrats, and America and for 2016!

 

The Republicans would hate to admit it, but they dodged a bullet on this one. If they had won, they would have had to come up with an alternative to Obamacare and/or face 'splainin' why they would support cutting off the healthcare subsidies to over 6 million people...

 

The fact that the Republicans went to these lengths to try and strip millions of people of health coverage shows you what they think of the poor. The whole rationale of King V. Burwell was basically to say "Fuck you" to the working poor who are unlucky enough to live in red states that refused to create their own exchange.

Meanwhile, the rest of the sane Republicans are actually breathing a sigh of relief. They realized what I just described above, and saw that the backlash of millions of people being stripped of their coverage would be enormous.

 

I wasn't and still am not a fan of ACA (anxiously waiting for something more efficient and helpful), but turning around now would have been a bigger disaster. It's probably for the best.

 

True. That would of worked in the Democrats favor too but i don't it will hurt Democrats either way. This is a success for millions of people and Republicans need to stop denying it.

---------- Post added 25th Jun 2015 at 10:13 AM ----------

I agree too some extent. It is not perfect in some respects but taking it away completely would be a total disaster.

 

Why is free or at least reasonably cheap healthcare viewed with such suspicion in the States anyway? You'd think that'd be the mother of all vote winners.

 

It was the mother of all vote winners because it sounds too good to be true. "Do you want lower-priced health insurance?" Almost nobody would say no. But that money has to come from somewhere, namely the people who don't need insurance as much but are forced upon pain of fine to buy it*. And really the problem lies in the insurance lobby for keeping themselves in power instead of advocating for a more direct public health system.

*This is what sours people. It's mandatory. Granted health is as important to a country as education and nobody gripes about socialization of the latter, but we don't have to buy school insurance or get extra fines slapped on us.

 

I'm happy for this decision, but I'd also like a system that was more direct, and didn't involve all these private insurance companies; I'd like a basic right to healthcare, more like in the UK/Canada.

It's also sad to see the basic greed that underlines Republican attitudes, and their basic contempt of the poor and working class.

 

It's not just the insurance companies. It may not even be mainly the insurance companies.

Time did a very interesting (or enraging) article on the cost of medical care in the US. It's a PDF at this link that will just download when you click it (or should). The online article on Time.com requires a subscription to read fully so using this one.

In a nutshell, the hospitals (in particular non-profit hospitals) are a huge racket that (over) charge whatever they please on a massive scale and with no real rhyme or reason beyond making money.

One of the statements I find most interesting is when it is pointed out that we spend a huge amount of time arguing about who should pay for medical care and almost no time questioning WHY it costs as much as it does. And then look at how much money the hospital industry pours into lobbying and public relations.

Anyway.

Todd