The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #139718 Message #3206938
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
12-Aug-11 - 07:38 PM
Thread Name: BS: Court strikes down health care insurance
Subject: RE: BS: Court strikes down health care insurance
The Supreme Court is expected to take up the case in October. "Legal experts said it was impossible to predict how the high court will rule but agreed that it may be a close vote by nine ideologically divided justices, with moderate conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy as the possible swing vote." The above paragraph by Reuters but other news agencies say pretty much the same.
The 11th Circuit ruling found that it did not pass muster under the clause or under the power of Congress to tax. The administration has said that the penalty for not buying healthcare coverage is akin to a tax.
"This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them repurchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives," the majority said in its 207-page opinion. The two judges who wrote the opinion are an appointee by Bush, and an appointee by Clinton.