BREAKING: Supreme Court upholds Obamacare and individual mandate as a tax

by The Right Scoop

***UPDATE 2: Sarah Palin weighs in:

***UPDATE: More from SCOTUS Blog:

In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

And this from me:

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I can’t believe it. The individual mandate upheld as a freaking tax. WTF???

This is from SCOTUS Blog:

10:08 Amy Howe: The individual mandate survives as a tax.
10:09 Amy Howe: It’s very complicated, so we’re still figuring it out.
10:10 Tom: So the mandate is constitutional. Chief Justice Roberts joins the left of the Court.
10:11 Amy Howe: The Medicaid provision is limited but not invalidated.
10:13 Tom: The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government’s power to terminate states’ Medicaid funds is narrowly read.
10:15 Tom: Chief Justice Roberts’ vote saved the ACA.

This is just more reason to vote for Romney and every freaking Republican we can to overturn this freedom killing monstrosity.


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