Fix Health Care Policy

Fellow Americans,

Like you, I am disappointed by the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision. The Court misread and rewrote Obamacare in order to save it. Such contortions are not the proper role of judging. Most Americans are with you and me and deeply dislike this law.

We believe, however, that this is far, far from a time for despair. This decision will energize freedom-loving Americans to once again take matters into their own hands. Our republic has survived and flourished for more than two centuries because men and women—brave, determined, and deeply committed to the cause of freedom—were willing to stand, to march, and to make whatever sacrifices were necessary so that their children would know the blessings of liberty, the hope and opportunity that flow from living in “the land of the Free.”

They will receive this ruling as a clarion call to action. Once again, the people will have to rise to defend a fundamental American concept: that the power of government over individuals must be limited.

First, let’s acknowledge what was good in the decision. The Court recognized that there are limits to what Congress may do under the Commerce Clause. Big-government forces have for too long abused this clause’s grant of congressional authority, but the Court’s decision reaffirms that there are limits on their actions.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: Individual Mandate, misread, ObamaCare, penalty, rewrote, Supreme Court ruling, tax, unpopular

For the past two years, America has witnessed headline after headline reporting on flaws in President Barack Obama’s health care law. And as America learns more about this intolerable act, the opposition to Obamacare continues to grow. Yesterday, a new poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News showed that more than two-thirds of Americans want to see the Supreme Court strike down Obamacare in whole or in part, and only 24 percent would keep the law in place.

In the face of this ground-shaking opposition, the White House is continuing its public relations campaign to save face if the Court rules that Obamacare should fall — a decision that could come by the end of this month. Yesterday, the Administration hosted a health care townhall meeting during which Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius trumpeted the law’s reforms, warned of the consequences if it were to be struck down, and promised that her agency is “ready for court contingencies” if the White House doesn’t get its way.

This is all part of a broader strategy being implemented by supporters of the law. As Heritage’s Rob Bluey reported late last month, liberal groups have planned an aggressive propaganda effort to sway media coverage and public opinion in defense of government-run health care. But as the Times / CBS poll shows, they have a hard row to hoe. And the mountain of Obamacare failures isn’t making their job any easier.

(Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: Individual Mandate, ObamaCare, propaganda effort, religious freedom, severability, strike down, Supreme Court

Heritage was at the Supreme Court for the past three days to observe the oral arguments over the constitutionality of Obamacare. Heritage’s Todd Gaziano and Hans von Spakovsky sat in for each day’s arguments and provided immediate reaction after each session. For your convenience, we have corralled these videos and blog posts below.

Monday, March 6: Anti-Injunction Act

The biggest news from the Supreme Court’s first day of oral arguments on Obamacare was that no justice indicated he or she would be troubled reaching the merits of the larger constitutional challenges to the law. At issue was whether the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) would bar the Court from considering the challenge to the individual mandate in the President’s health care law, and all eight justices who asked questions seemed satisfied that one of several exceptions to the AIA applied, thereby allowing them to hear the other legal issues. 

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: Anti-Injunction Act, Individual Mandate, Medicaid spending, ObamaCare, severability, Supreme Court case, videos

This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and Florida v. The Department of HHS to evaluate the many legal questions raised by the passage of ObamaCare, including whether Congress exceeded its constitutional power when it enacted the individual mandate. Join us on March 30 from 12-1 ET for our “Lunch with Heritage” online chat. Heritage’s legal expert Robert Alt will be answering all of your questions about the issues before the Court, possible decisions the Court could reach, and consequences those decisions could have on public policy.

 Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: Individual Mandate, ObamaCare, online chat, public policy, Supreme Court case

The packed hearing room of the Supreme Court was a who’s who of lawyers and political leaders this morning, all of whom witnessed what was an undeniably bad day for the Obama Administration and its defense of the President’s health care law. Paul Clement and Michael Carvin, attorneys representing those challenging Obamacare, battled Solicitor General Donald Verrelli, who was defending the law, and urged the Supreme Court to find the individual mandate in ObamaCare unconstitutional. Present in the courtroom were about twelve state attorneys general, including those from Utah, North Dakota, Florida, Texas, and Virginia, as well Eric Holder, Kathleen Sibelius and U.S. Senators such as Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, and John Kerry.

The hostile questioning for Clement and Carvin from the liberal justices, particularly Steven Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, left little doubt as to their collective view that requiring individuals to buy health insurance was within the Commerce Power of Congress – an argument that liberals advanced in defense of the individual mandate’s constitutionality. And at times when Verrelli was faltering in answering tough questions from other more skeptical justices like Antonin Scalia, Justices Ginsburg and Breyer would step in to help him, posing arguments in favor of the government as if they were questions.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: constitutionality, government powers, Individual Mandate, NFIB, ObamaCare, oral arguments, States, Supreme Court

Call it the main event: after a day puzzling over whether Obamacare’s fines on those who don’t buy insurance constitute a tax or a penalty—an important threshold issue, to be sure, but one that hasn’t quite captured the public’s imagination—the Court today will hear oral argument regarding one of the most important issues before it in 65 years: whether the Constitution empowers Congress to require that virtually all Americans purchase or obtain health insurance coverage.

The answer to that question will determine whether the federal Leviathan truly remains a government of limited, enumerated powers, or whether the division of powers between the federal government, on the one hand, and the states and the people, on the other, has finally been obliterated. In short, today’s argument cuts to the very heart of our “federalist” republic, pitting against each other two drastically different visions of the role of the national government in our lives.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: commerce powers, congress, freedoms, Individual Mandate, overreach, Supreme Court challenge, unconstitutional

Rare is the occasion when the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather to hear three days of arguments, and rarer still is when it is for a case like Obamacare — one that cuts to the core of the Constitution and whose outcome could fundamentally alter the role of the federal government and its power over the people. But today the Court will do just that when it open its doors and begins weighing the arguments on the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s seminal health care law.

Were the American people to vote on the issue, they would fall decidedly against Obamacare, as recent polls have shown. But for the Court, the decision is not as cut and dried as an up or down vote, but one that involves the interplay of a series of issues raised by those who are challenging Obamacare — more than half the States of the Union and a collection of interested organizations and private parties — and those brought by the Obama Administration, which is defending the law. And they come to the Supreme Court after conflicting appellate court rulings which have left undecided the question of whether Obamacare is permissible under the Constitution.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: Anti-Injunction Act, Individual Mandate, Medicaid Expansion, ObamaCare, oral arguments, severability, Supreme Court challenge

Shortly after President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law two years ago, the National Federation of Independent Business joined a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. After victories in district court and federal appeals court, Obamacare goes before the U.S. Supreme Court next week.

Karen Harned, executive director of NFIB’s Small Business Legal Center, has argued passionately on behalf of business owners against the law. During a visit to The Heritage Foundation yesterday, she sat down with us to preview the six hours of oral arguments and the what’s at stake before the high court.

Listen to the interview with Karen Harned on this week’s Scribecast

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: Individual Mandate, NFIB, ObamaCare, penalties, Supreme Court challenge, unconstitutional, uninsured

In an opinion piece over the weekend, Washington Post Supreme Court reporter Robert Barnes posits that the government may be able to “lure” eight of the nine justices to uphold the Affordable Care Act. Barnes asserts that even conservative bastion Antonin Scalia might agree with the government that Congress’s power to regulate commerce among the states extends to compelling people to purchase inflated health insurance policies.

As proof of this, Barnes points to the High Court’s 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich. Concurring with the majority opinion to uphold a law regulating home-grown marijuana, Scalia noted that the marijuana was “never more than an instant from the interstate market,” yet this logic cannot extend to Congress’s unprecedented attempt to force people into the health insurance market. Even though every American may be “potentially never more than an instant” from needing health care, there is a fundamental difference between procuring a commodity sold in interstate commerce and sitting at home and doing nothing.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: health insurance policies, Individual Mandate, ObamaCare, Supreme Court justices

Two years ago, everything about Obamacare was in the future. Recall the revealing comment at the time by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) that Congress had to pass the legislation to see what was in it. Now that the disputed law is in its implementation stage, Americans are beginning to see what is in it and what it means for them. Welcome to the future.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is the centerpiece of the current progressive agenda. At its core is the requirement for individuals—under penalty of law—to buy health insurance. As we have argued before, this requirement is unprecedented and unconstitutional. The concern is that if government can regulate inactivity, it can do anything and everything.

We now see how this new regime will operate. Massive regulatory authority over one-sixth of the American economy is transferred to a collection of more than 150 federal agencies, bureaus, and commissions, along with an unprecedented delegation of power to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. As a result, key policy decisions are given over to bureaucrats whose “rules” in the guise of “regulations,” mostly unaccountable and invisible to the public, have the full force and effect of laws passed by Congress.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: anti-conscience rules, Individual Mandate, ObamaCare, unprecedented power grab