[COMMENTARY] Co-exist and take business elsewhere

The gay rights movement and those of us who support it have a decision to make now that the Supreme Court has ruled and same-sex marriage is the law of the land.​

One possible course of action: a mop-up operation whereby the victorious forces seek out and eliminate the holdouts, such as conservative Christian bakers who refuse to bake for wedding-bound gay people.

Another course of action — call it “live and let live” — suggests a more finessed approach, one by which same-sex couples take their business elsewhere when that is a practical option, as it so often is.

Here’s a vote for the latter.

It’s entirely understandable if some lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their supporters are not ready for the more peaceable route. Given the treatment LGBT folks have received from some conservative Christians over the decades, retribution might be too tantalizing to resist.

So, too, must we acknowledge the importance of the principle of non-discrimination. Laws and policies that militate against unequal treatment of people on the basis of gender and sexual identity should, if anything, be strengthened. In a similar vein, the instruments of law and government, such as county clerks in the position to dispense marriage licenses, should not be allowed to say “no” to a couple because they disapprove. Religious freedom goes far in this country, but not that far.

And even as Christians complain about restrictions on their rights as bakers or photographers or whatever, a few Christians working in government continue to defy the law. Two clerks in Kentucky are resisting the Supreme Court ruling, and similar efforts are ongoing in Alabama and Tennessee.

These are matters of law and policy. Everyday decisions and conduct are another matter — an area where a little finesse might sometimes be advisable. Unless the no-gays florists are the only game in town, which they might be in smaller or more conservative communities, it is more sensible for multiple reasons to find another service provider — a business that would be delighted to have the opportunity and is worthy of the fee.

C.J. Prince, executive director of North Jersey Pride, has stated that she would welcome the posting of signs in the windows of businesses that have a “no gays” preference — so she can shop at their competitors “and proudly put my money where my allies are.” She goes on to argue in her much-discussed Huffington Post piece, “I do not want to order a wedding cake from a bakery owned by a guy who thinks I'm going to hell. I have no desire to purchase bouquets from a florist who pickets pride parades.”

Window signs are not the way to accomplish this. They evoke too much painful history, and there are other, less crude ways by which people in a given community develop a sense of who’s in and who’s out when it comes to serving LGBT customers.

But Prince makes a valid point about the good sense in spending one’s money at businesses run by people of a non-discriminatory bent — businesses that deserve the opportunity to serve and profit.

Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, told me that her organization does not support the practice — one that is actually rare, she said — of targeting businesses that oppose gay marriage for the sake of making a point and pressing the principle.

“We are not in favor of baiting,” Warbelow said. “I think our society is in a moment of change. There’s something to be said for having patience and grace with one another.” That doesn’t mean we don’t need laws against discrimination, Warbelow said. But it does argue against “going in just to mess with someone.”

In his dissent in the same-sex marriage decision, Chief Justice John Roberts warns that hard questions lie ahead in the aftermath of the court’s ruling. Yes, they do. But let’s not make this situation harder than it needs to be.

In the many instances where the no-gay die-hards are not the only game in town, steer clear is the way to go. Whether it is done out of spite or crazy kindness, as an informal boycott or an extension of grace, the way to treat them may be a simple as:

Leave them alone.

Tom Krattenmaker is a writer specializing in religion in public life, a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors, and communications director at Yale Divinity School. His most recent book is The Evangelicals You Don’t Know: Introducing the Next Generation of Christians.

Via: The Courier Journal

Continue Reading.....

[OPINION] SUPREME COURT’S WHITE LIE ON OBAMACARE

The GOP-majority Supreme Court saved President Barack Obama’s bacon Thursday with a political ruling that papered over his signature Affordable Care Act. Writing for the majority in the 6-3 King v. Burwell decision, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the 900-page law was written behind closed doors with little debate or amendment and thus was “inartfully” drafted. It was the court’s obligation, he wrote, to translate bill language limiting the government subsidies to enrollees in “an exchange established by the State” as meaning enrollees in federal exchanges also can get subsidies.

Roberts always has been a consummate politician in his role as guardian of the big bench. The President George W. Bush appointee had good reason to fear how the public might react if the Supreme Court overturned a law that benefits millions of Americans.

Thirty-four states rely on federal Obamacare exchanges. That’s 6 million people, 87 percent of whom bought health care with federal tax credits. Roberts cited a study that predicted that cutting off those subsidies would result in a 47 percent increase in premiums and a 70 percent decline in enrollment.

Between a rock and a hard place, Roberts argued that Congress surely never meant to cut out subsidies in states without their own exchanges, because “it would destabilize the individual insurance market in any State with a Federal Exchange, and likely create the very ‘death spirals’ that Congress designed the Act to avoid.”

I sympathize, but Roberts has to know he’s wrong. Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the White House, explained during a 2012 speech that the federal law limited subsidies to enrollees of state exchanges in order to “squeeze” states to act. Quoth Gruber, “If you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits, but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley — no conservative he — wrote last year, “I believe that the text is clear in the Act and that the Obama Administration effectively altered the language when 34 states decided to defy the government and refuse to create state exchanges.”

Via: The American Spectator

Continue Reading....

John Roberts has the black robes, and the interpretive gifts, too.

In the matter of the so-called Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court ruled that the law must not say what it in fact does say because it would be better if it were not to say what it says and were to say something else instead. In the matter of same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court rules that the law must say what it does not say because it would be better if it were to say what it does not say instead of what it says. Which is to say, the Supreme Court has firmly established that it does not matter what the law says or does not say — what matters is what they want. 

That texts may be imaginatively interpreted to any end is not news — “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” as William Shakespeare observed in The Merchant of Venice. The legendary constitutional scholar Barack Obama failed to notice, until the day before yesterday, that the Constitution mandates the legalization of homosexual marriage from sea to shining sea, but, to be fair, that is an easy provision to overlook, even for a mind as keen as Barack Obama’s, since the Constitution does not say one word about marriage, much less about the state-level codification of homosexual couplings being a fundamental federal right.

Jiggery-pokery” is putting it generously. 

But scriptural interpretation is a funny business. I grew up on the edges of some wildly entertaining fundamentalist circles in West Texas, and I very much enjoyed hearing mail-order theologians explain how, sometime between turning water into wine at that famous wedding and pouring out a round for the guys at the Last Supper, Jesus very subtly declared alcohol verboten. Put any given text on the rack, and you can prove Ronald Coase’s dictum: If you torture the evidence enough, it will confess to anything. 

Constitutional torture is an art, and Chief Justice John Roberts has emerged as its Andy Warhol: an impresario who will put his name on anything. It is uncomfortable to think about, but our Supreme Court functions in much the same way as Iran’s Guardian Council: It is a supralegislative body of purported scholars, distinguished by ceremonial black robes, that imaginatively applies ancient doctrines “conscious of the present needs and the issues of the day,” as the ayatollahs over there and over here both put it, deciding — discovering! — what is mandatory and what is forbidden as the shifting currents of politics dictate. The main difference is that the Iranians take their sharia rather more seriously than we take our constitutional law: John Roberts’s opinion in Burwell wasn’t just wrong — wrong can be forgiven — it was embarrassing, craven, and intellectually indefensible. Antonin Scalia was right to let him have it with both barrels, but he’d do better to resign from the Supreme Court — it is difficult to see how an honorable man could be associated with it.

Via: National Review

Continue Reading....

Obama's Amazing Disgrace of a Eulogy

Fresh off a victory lap in the Rose Garden where the #LOVEWINS president narcissistically defined agreeing with him as “love,” President Obama segued from LGBTQ rights into racial rancor and Biblical misrepresentation during a eulogy where he also defined “God’s grace” as agreeing with him.

Taking to the pulpit at slain Charleston Emanuel A.M.E. Church’s pastor and state Senator Clementa Pinckney’s going-home celebration, Barack ‘Can you say Amen’ Obama assumed a black-preacher cadence and began the eulogy by “Giving all praise and honor to [a] God” whose Word the president normally revises with as much liberality as he does the U.S. Constitution.

Wily, crafty, and well done, the president’s torturous twisting of Scripture was rivaled only by Chief Justice John Robert’s opinion on Obamacare.

After a perfunctory acknowledgement of the slain pastor’s wife, daughters, and church family, the president cracked a few self-deprecating jokes before diving headlong into a discourse

Wily, crafty, and well done, the president’s torturous twisting of Scripture was rivaled only by Chief Justice John Robert’s opinion on Obamacare.

After a perfunctory acknowledgement of the slain pastor’s wife, daughters, and church family, the president cracked a few self-deprecating jokes before diving headlong into a discourse on racial and progressive politics.

Pinckney was a Democrat senator representing the “Lowcountry” of South Carolina, so the president began by entertaining the possibility that the senator was unable to get resources to address inadequate schools, poverty, child hunger, and lack of healthcare because he was in the political minority.

From that point forward, the president was in full-on, pedal-to-the-metal racial-injustice mode. Quite frankly, Obama’s self-serving eulogy exploited a dead man to offer racial grievances, latent hostility, and under the guise of grace, justify a buffet of tired liberal solutions.

Via: American Thinker

Continue Reading....

Roberts Warns Churches Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status For Opposing Gay Marriage

Churches could lose their tax-exempt status with the IRS if they refuse to recognize the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warned in his dissenting opinion.

He cited a comment made months ago by the U.S. government’s top lawyer on the same-sex marriage case.

“Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage — when, for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex married couples,” Roberts wrote.

“Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage. See Tr. of Oral Arg. on Question 1, at 36–38. There is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be before this Court. Unfortunately, people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.”

During oral arguments in April, Justice Samuel Alito asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli whether schools that teach that marriage is between one man and one woman would face treatment similar to pro-segregation schools during the civil rights era.

“It’s certainly going to be an issue,” Verrilli replied. “I don’t deny that.”

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading....

Scalia Dissent: SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling Represents ‘Threat to Democracy’

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia issued yet another of his trademarked biting dissents in Obergefell v. Hodges, calling the majority’s pro-gay marriage ruling a “threat to democracy.”

Scalia joined Chief Justice John Roberts‘ chief dissent, but dissented separately to voice just how disappointed he was in the decision. Scalia voiced indifference to the issue of gay marriage itself, but wrote that it was the legislatures’ responsibility to address the issue, not the courts.

“Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court,” Scalia wrote. “The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact— and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create ‘liberties’ that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention.’”

“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

 

He continued to say that it was unimaginable that the drafters in the of the Fourteenth Amendment back in the 1860’s intended to make gay marriage bans unconstitutional. “The five Justices who compose today’s majority… have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since.”

Scalia even went after the justices’ personal history, accusing them of being unrepresentative of the American public. “Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination.”

“The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today’s social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges…” Scalia wrote.

Via: Mediaite.com

Continue Reading....

Why Four Justices Were Against the Supreme Court's Huge Gay Marriage Decision

June 26, 2015 Same-sex marriage is now a right in every state in the country, following ahistoric 5-4 decision from the Supreme Court Friday. The four justices who disagreed with the Court's opinion, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, each wrote their own dissent laying out just why they believed the majority to be wrong.

Here's their reasoning.

Chief Justice John Roberts

Roberts argument centered around the need to preserve states' rights over what he viewed as following the turn of public opinion. In ruling in favor of gay marriage, he said "five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law."

While Roberts said he did not "begrudge" any of the celebrations that would follow the Court ruling, he had serious concerns that the Court had extended its role from Constitutional enforcer to activist.

"Understand well what this dissent is about: It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic republic, that decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representatives, or with five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law," he wrote.

While, he recognized the decision would be hailed as a major victory for same-sex couples and their allies, he noted they had been set back.

"Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens—through the democratic process—to adopt their view. That ends today," Roberts wrote. "Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept."

Justice Antonin Scalia

According to Justice Antonin Scalia, today's majority ruling represents a "judicial Putsch."

In beginning his dissent, Scalia wrote that while he has no personal opinions on whether the law should allow same-sex marriage, he feels very strongly that it is not the place of the Supreme Court to decide. He stated he wanted to write a separate dissent "to call attention to this Court's threat to American democracy."

"Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best," Scalia wrote. "But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law."

Via: National Journal

Continue Reading....

[BREAKING Supreme Court delivers win for gay marriage backers, forcing states to authorize same-sex unions all across the United States

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a 5-4 decision that gay marriage is the law of the land. 

The landmark ruling, delivered just in time for Pride weekend festivities in San Francisco and New York City, says that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees gays and lesbians must have the same right to marry as heterosexuals. 

The justices also ruled in the issue that has bitterly divided the nation that states without gay-marriage laws on the books must recognize gay marriages performed in other states. 

The decision came on what will be remembered as a seminal date in gay rights history. June 26 was also the calendar date that saw the high court rule on Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 and United States v. Windsor two years ago.

All three majoroity decisions were written by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

+2

LET THE STREET PARTIES BEGIN: Gay marriage is now legal in all 50 states

+2

OUT AND ABOUT: Supporters of gay marriage ralled Thursday in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., expecting a ruling that came 24 hours later

Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democratic senator and a supporter of broad rights for gays in America, celebrated the ruling minutes after it was read in open court.

'By recognizing the constitutional right of all people to marry the person they love, the Supreme Court has guaranteed that, across the country, same-sex couples will have their relationships treated with the full legal dignity and respect that they deserve,' Kaine said in a statement.

Not everyone in Washington shared his sentiment. Four of the Supreme Court's justices dissented, including Chief Justice John Roberts – and each one of them wrote a separate opinion outlining why.

'If you are among the many Americans – of whatever sexual orientation – who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today's decision,' Roberts wrote.

'Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.'

Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative rock on the court since 1986, wrote his own stinging rejoinder and called the decision a 'threat to American democracy.' 

'Hubris is sometimes defined as o'erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall,' he wrote. 'With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them – with each decision that is unabashedly not based on law, but on the "reasoned judgment" of a bare majority of this Court – we move one step closer.' 

But the five robed justices who banded together to expand the Constitution's protections of gays and lesbians worded their ruling just as strongly.

'No union is more profound than marriage,' thy wrote, 'for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. ... [The challengers] ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.'

Via: Daily Mail

Continue Reading....

[VIDEO] Chief Justice Roberts affirms: ObamaCare was poorly written

While Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a blow to ObamaCare foes with a majority opinion upholding subsidies, he backed up the law's opponents on one point: The language in the Affordable Care Act was kind of a mess. 

"The Affordable Care Act contains more than a few examples of inartful drafting," he wrote. 

The 6-3 Supreme Court decision Thursday upheld the legality of ObamaCare subsidies nationwide. The case centered on language in the law that technically limited subsidies to those who purchase insurance in exchanges established by the states. 

Opponents argued this rendered subsidies invalid for insurance purchased through the federal HealthCare.gov. 

But Roberts and the majority ruled that Congress never intended that. "Those credits are necessary for the Federal Exchanges to function like their State Exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid," he wrote. 

Further, the majority opinion reasoned that the law itself was poorly written, and so the court must look to Congress' intent -- rather than the specific language in the law itself. 

"Congress wrote key parts of the Act behind closed doors, rather than through 'the traditional legislative process,'" Roberts wrote. 

He proceeded to cite process issues that Republicans have long complained contributed to the bill being rushed. 

Roberts wrote: "And Congress passed much of the Act using a complicated budgetary procedure known as 'reconciliation,' which limited opportunities for debate and amendment, and bypassed the Senate's normal 60-vote filibuster requirement. ... 

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

FAREWELL TO THE RULE OF LAW: SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS OBAMACARE SUBSIDIES

The rule of law was formally put out to pasture by the Supreme Court on Thursday, as we discovered that the plain text of a law matters less than what the party in power thinks it should mean.

On a 6-3 vote in the King v. Burwell case, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy joining the liberal bloc vote of Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, the Court decided to allow the federal ObamaCare exchanges to continue distributing taxpayer subsidies for health insurance, even though the Affordable Care Act explicitly reserves those subsidies for state exchanges, and there is ample evidence the authors of ObamaCare knew what they were doing when they inserted that language into the law.

They simply changed their minds later, when the political ground shifted. Most states didn’t set up exchanges, several those which did abandoned them, and cutting off the ObamaCare subsidies could have scuttled the entire scheme.

Much of the punditry on both Left and Right leading up to the decision assumed the Court would nix the federal subsidies, sticking congressional Republicans with the outrageous burden of saving a law none of them voted for. (Let’s be honest: after watching the new Republican majority in action, it’s highly likely that they would have done so, with minimal political pain for the Democrats.) If the Internet is running a bit slow today, it’s probably because ten thousand “What the GOP Must Do to Save ObamaCare Now” articles are being deleted.

Justice Antonin Scalia, in dissent, growled that ObamaCare should be called “SCOTUSCare” now, because the Supreme Court has rewritten it twice to keep it alive. It should go without saying that this is not how the American system of government was supposed to work.

The majority decision actually does make it clear this is a pure exercise of political power. Chief Justice John Roberts writes, after reviewing the debate over what the “exchange established by the state” language means:

The upshot of all this is that the phrase “an Exchange established by the State under [42 U. S. C. §18031]” is properly viewed as ambiguous. The phrase may be limited in its reach to State Exchanges. But it is also possible that the phrase refers to all Exchanges—both State and Federal—at least for purposes of the tax credits. If a State chooses not to follow the directive in Section 18031 that it establish an Exchange, the Act tells the Secretary to establish “such Exchange.” §18041. And by using the words “such Exchange,” the Act indicates that State and Federal Exchanges should be the same. But State and Federal Exchanges would differ in a fundamental way if tax credits were available only on State Exchanges—one type of Exchange would help make insurance more affordable by providing billions of dollars to the States’ citizens; the other type of Exchange would not.

What an amazing pile of drivel, so utterly unworthy of the Supreme Court. And what a dangerous precedent to set for the final destruction of the American system of limited powers and equal branches of government. The proper remedy for a poorly-written “ambiguous” law is to send it back to the legislature to fix it, not let a block of liberal justices declare that ambiguous language is the gateway to even greater power.

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading...

Supreme Court Says Government Seizure of Raisins Is Unconstitutional

WASHINGTON –  The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the government can't force raisin farmers to give up part of their annual crop for less than it's worth, a victory for conservative groups that hailed the decision as a win for private property rights.

The justices ruled 8-1 that a 1940s-era program born out of the Great Depression is unconstitutional because it allows federal officials to seize personal property from farmers without fully compensating them, even though the goal is to benefit farmers by stabilizing market prices.

The court sided with California farmers Marvin and Laura Horne, who claimed they were losing money under a program they called outdated and ineffective. They had been fined $695,000 for trying to get around it.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the government must pay "just compensation" when it takes personal goods, just as when it takes land away.

Roberts rejected the government's argument that the Hornes voluntarily chose to participate in the raisin market and have the option of growing different crops if they don't like it.

"'Let them sell wine' is probably not much more comforting to the raisin growers than similar retorts have been to others throughout history," Roberts said. "Property rights cannot be so easily manipulated."

The case was considered one of the most important property disputes to reach the high court since 2005, when the justices ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could use the power of eminent domain to hand private homes or businesses to developers to help stimulate economic improvement. That case sparked a backlash in many states and led more than 40 state legislatures to pass laws protecting property rights.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

The voice of opposition past, Justice Kennedy may save Obamacare now

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Justice Anthony Kennedy was furious when a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama’s healthcare law. As he read the dissenting opinion from the bench three years ago, his anger was palpable. The majority regards its opinion “as judicial modesty," he declared. "It is not. It amounts instead to a vast judicial over-reaching.”

That was Kennedy on June 28, 2012.

Now, as the country awaits a ruling in the second major challenge to Obama's signature Affordable Care Act, a question is whether the justice who was the voice of the opposition then could provide the critical fifth vote to uphold the law on the nine-justice court now.

At stake are the tax-credit subsidies that have helped low- and moderate-income Americans obtain health insurance. The challengers say the government unlawfully extended those subsidies to states that did not create local insurance exchanges but instead relied on the federal exchange. If the court strikes down the subsidies, millions of Americans in at least 34 of the 50 states could lose coverage.

Five years after its passage, the Affordable Care Act has become ingrained in American life even as it remains politically divisive. “This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another," Obama, a Democrat, declared in a speech last week. Republicans have called for repeal and among the related lawsuits simmering in lower courts is a dispute brought by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives over Treasury Department payments to healthcare insurers.

IMPOSSIBLE TO PREDICT

In the case before the court, the unique issue along with Kennedy's record and his comments in oral arguments raise the possibility he will join the four liberal justices to endorse the law. Three years ago, his fellow conservative Chief Justice John Roberts cast the swing vote with the liberals to uphold the law. It marked a rare episode when Kennedy, the usual key justice on this divided bench, did not control the outcome of a momentous case.

It is impossible to predict with confidence how the court will resolve the case, King v. Burwell. A ruling is anxiously awaited by officials in Washington and the insurance and healthcare industries nationwide.

What is known: Two days after the March 4 oral arguments this year, the justices, per their usual practice, took a vote in a small conference room off Chief Justice Roberts’ chambers. The most senior justice on the winning side then assigned the opinion for those in the majority; the senior justice on the dissenting side tapped a writer for the main dissent. Drafts of dueling opinions began circulating among the chambers.

Via: Yahoo News

Continue Reading.....

The Website Is Fixable, But Obamacare Isn't

Since Obamacare made its debut, discussions have focused on Ted Cruz' efforts to defund the law and the shockingly bad functionality of the Website itself. Fortunately for Obama, polling indicates that Senator Cruz has lost, at least for now, the battle for hearts and minds. The President has not been nearly so lucky on the technological front. If current trends continue, the rollout may go down as the worst major product launch in history. But given the government's enormous resources, it's safe to say that the site itself will ultimately be fixed. But when it is finally up and running, the plan's many deeper, and more intractable, flaws will come into focus. That's when the fun will really begin.

Put simply the program is built on a mountain of false assumptions and is covered by a terrain of unanticipated incentives. Any cleared-eyed observer should conclude that it is perfectly designed to raise the costs of care and wreck the federal budget. However, like just about every other complicated problem that bedevils the nation, the public has become far too caught up in the politics and has ignored the horrific details.

Most people agree that the plan can only remain solvent if enough young and healthy people ("the invincibles") agree to sign up. They are the ones who are likely to pay more into the system than they take out. But now that insurance coverage is guaranteed to anyone at any time (at the same price -- even after they have gotten sick or injured), the only incentive for the invincibles to sign up will be to avoid the penalty (I think we can dismiss "civic duty" as an effective motivator). But as I detailed in a column last year, Justice John Roberts declared the law to be constitutional only because the penalties are far too low to actually compel behavior. Once young healthy people understand that they can save money by dropping insurance, they will. No amount of slick, cheerful TV ads will change that.

The good news for Obama is that the plan will get a large percentage of young people covered. The bad news is that many of those that do sign up will not help the bottom line. The youngest and healthiest of the group are under 26 and will now be able to stay on their parents' plans. This group will add nothing to the pool of premiums (but will use services). Among those older than 26, the ones who qualify for the largest subsidies will be more inclined to sign up. The way the plan is structured, individuals and families earning between 1.38 and 4 times the Federal poverty level will qualify for a subsidy. The government subsidy covers almost the entire premium for those near the bottom of that spectrum. These individuals will definitely sign up. But just like those under 26, they will be a net drain on the system.

Via: Real Clear Markets

Continue Reading.....