21h ago

US Supreme Court appears likely to uphold Obamacare's preventive care coverage mandate

The Supreme Court seemed likely to uphold a key preventive-care provision of the Affordable Care Act in a case heard Monday.

Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, along with the court’s three liberals, appeared skeptical of arguments that Obamacare’s process for deciding which services must be fully covered by private insurance is unconstitutional.

The case could have big ramifications for the law’s preventive care coverage requirements for an estimated 150 million Americans. Medications and services that could be affected include statins to prevent heart disease, lung cancer screenings, HIV-prevention drugs and medication to lower the chance of breast cancer for high-risk women.

19 comments

So, The Fascist Five are starting to feel fear. Good.
- Amy Coney Barrett has been voting very reasonably for the last six months. She also gave Trump a scowling stink eye during his SotU address. I think the spell wore off and she’s starting to come around.
  https://www.irishstar.com/culture/entertainment/amy-coney-barrett-donald-trump-34811228
  
  She doesn't have the testosterone that compels the others to pretend to be badasses.
- Most likely someone they know would be negatively affected

"Skeptical of arguments"
Now I'm no lawyer and I can see how the details of this makes it seem like a complex issue, but my gut reaction was that it should be unconstitutional first and foremost for one group to be able to through their religious beliefs deny basic well being for others, especially in such a broad manner.
And my first response days ago before even seeing the specifics of this case was "the best way to topple ACA is and always has been to propose something better". Almost 20 years later and this has never been a route the Republicans have tried.
- Of course they haven't. The ACA was their healthcare plan. Nearly everything the Dems originally wanted was stripped by the time it was passed. It's an almost copy-paste of Romneycare just on a national scale.
  
  THIS.
  The ACA was created in a Conservative Think Tank. It's the Health Insurance Industry's wet dream: every single citizen MANDATED to buy health insurance. Mitt Romney tested the waters when he was Governor of Massachusetts. It was very popular. It should have been, it was better than dying with no insurance in a trailer park.
  It's only when they labeled it OBAMACARE that the chuds lost their minds. Multiple independent journalistic organizations went to ground to interview peasants about their opinions on both, and when told it was the same thing, they did everything they could think of to justify not liking Obamacare (i.e., Negrocare.)
  And most of their Boomer voters still believe they're not the same thing.
  
  I hadn't really thought about how this move by Obama may have unwittingly pushed the Overton window way to the right...
  Republicans were in the throes of racist rage during Obama's tenure, and they hated everything he proposed and defined themselves by opposing everything he wanted to do.
  Obama, being clever, takes the GOP's own health care plan, and turns around and sells it to them.
  If it were president Mitt Romney that proposed it, it would have gotten support. Hell, even if it were a Democratic white dude, it would have been doable.
  But because it came from Obama, they had to define themselves by their opposition to their own plan. Pushing them (permanently, it seems) further right on the topic of health care.
- For the modern conservative - any money not spent on public services is "something better"
  
  "As long as it hurts "Them People" worser! 'Murica!"
- Honestly, and my guess is you already know this (and others I see beat me to it), American Conservatives mostly haven’t proposed anything else because the ACA was a conservative policy and was implemented first by Governor Romney in Massachusetts.
  It’s hard to get more conservative than policy written by Heritage Foundation economist and implemented by a Mormon Vulture Capitalist.
  Also the mask is off now. These mother fuckers don’t give a shit about policy anymore. They’re not passing any laws. Like I see 34 bills passed in 2023 and a handful of them were fluff—what the fuck?
  Anyway I agree with you. It’s also very tough to get justices to not vote religiously—sorry I mean with “historical accuracy” in mind.

This was really an administrative law case. The Biden administration was defending against a claim that the taskforce that decides which things should be covered was unconstitutional. Now the Trump admin has taken up the case and is arguing that the taskforce is constitutional, but because the secretary of hhs has final rule making authority and can actively override the taskforce. The supreme Court seems to be agreeing with that interpretation. Meaning that the brain worm will get more power to be able to decide which drugs should and should not be covered....so not a great result overall.
- This is the analysis I had as well. Anything trump wants, we don't.

So next to nothing is better than nothing? Stop pretending that for-profit "health insurance" is anything other than gambling over when you'll die

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