From the Left

/

Politics

Conservatives Attack, Rescue Obamacare

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

What a deal. The Supreme Court's Obamacare decision reminds me of a demand that an aide to the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley is said to have given to reporters: Don't say what the mayor says, say what he means.

Conservatives hoped that the high court would hold congressional Democrats to what they wrote in the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, which they passed without a single Republican vote.

In particular, conservatives hoped the court would strike down a key provision in the lengthy law that provides tax credits to help qualifying Americans to pay for health insurance.

The passage in question authorizes tax credits for those who buy insurance in exchanges that are "established by the state." Left out of that wording were 6.4 million customers who buy insurance in federal exchanges, which have turned out to be the Obamacare marketplaces in all but sixteen states and the District of Columbia.

Without the subsidies in those states, the ACA could collapse. No more Obamacare. That would be just fine with the president's Republican adversaries but -- surprise!

Chief Justice Roberts, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, decided to listen not to what the Congress wrote, but to what they meant.

 

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," Roberts wrote. "If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter."

He was joined in that view by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Opposing were Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr.

Writing for the minority, Scalia lacerated Robert's decision with the fury of a right-wing talk show host as "interpretive jiggery-pokery", a "defense of the indefensible" and "pure applesauce," among other gems.

"We should start calling this law SCOTUScare," he wrote in a play on the U.S. Supreme Court's initials. Scalia was accusing his fellow conservative of legislating from the bench, a no-no particularly in conservative circles. Yet Roberts sounded fearless and thick-skinned as a honey badger in shrugging off Scalia's complaints. The chief justice was answering to a different brand of conservatism, the kind that cares about conserving the constitutional will of Congress, a body that -- unlike the Supremes -- is comprised of elected representatives.

...continued

swipe to next page

(c) 2015 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

Comics

Steve Benson A.F. Branco Marshall Ramsey Kevin Siers Christopher Weyant Jeff Danziger