In Massachusetts, Insurance Mandate Stirs Some Dissent
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
BOSTON — Wayde Lodor is part of the 2 percent: the roughly 120,000 residents of Massachusetts who lack health insurance despite the state’s landmark 2006 law requiring almost every adult in the state to have it. He is likely to face a penalty this year, having made enough money under the state’s guidelines to afford a health plan. But Mr. Lodor, an independent product development consultant from Leominster, remains defiant.
“I’m in good shape, I don’t eat meat, I don’t drink excessively, I’ve never smoked,” said Mr. Lodor, 53, who estimates he would have to spend at least $1,200 a month to cover himself and his college-age daughter. “The last thing I’m going to do is not pay my rent because I have to pay for some state-mandated health coverage that I don’t think I need.”
As the Supreme Court hears arguments this week on the constitutionality of the national health care law and its requirement that most Americans be insured or pay a penalty, Massachusetts offers a real-world laboratory of how such a mandate might work.
On Day 3, Justices Weigh What-Ifs of Health Ruling
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON — The day after the Supreme Court suggested that President Obama’s health care law might be in danger of being held unconstitutional, the justices on Wednesday turned their attention to the practical consequences and political realities of such a ruling.
The justices seemed divided on both questions before them: What should happen to the rest of the law if the court strikes down its core provision? And was the law’s expansion of the Medicaidprogram constitutional?
The two arguments, over almost three hours, were by turns grave and giddy. They were also relentlessly pragmatic. The justices considered what sort of tasks it makes sense to assign to Congress, what kinds of interaction between federal and state officials are permissible and even the political character of the lawsuits challenging the law. One justice dipped into Senate vote counting.
Academic Built Case for Mandate in Health Care Law
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
After Massachusetts, California came calling. So did Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
They all wanted Jonathan Gruber, a numbers wizard at M.I.T., to help them figure out how to fix their health care systems, just as he had helped Mitt Romney overhaul health insurance when he was the Massachusetts governor.
Then came the call in 2008 from President-elect Obama’s transition team, the one that officially turned this stay-at-home economics professor into Mr. Mandate.
Mr. Gruber has spent decades modeling the intricacies of the health care ecosystem, which involves making predictions about how new laws will play out based on past experience and economic theory. It is his research that convinced the Obama administration that health care reform could not work without requiring everyone to buy insurance.
And it is his work that explains why President Obama has so much riding on the three days of United States Supreme Court hearings, which ended Wednesday, about the constitutionality of the mandate. Questioning by the court’s conservative justices has suggested deep skepticism about the mandate, setting off waves of worry among its backers — Mr. Gruber included.
Supreme Court’s health-care ruling could deal dramatic blow to Obama presidency
By Amy Gardner,
CHICAGO — The Supreme Court’s skeptical consideration of President Obama’s landmark health-care legislation this week has forced his supporters to contemplate the unthinkable: that the justices could throw out the law and destroy the most far-reaching accomplishment of the Obama presidency.The fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is uncertain. A ruling is not expected until June. White House officials are refusing publicly to consider that the law might be struck down or to discuss contingency plans, insisting that they do not address hypothetical questions.
Other Democrats have begun assessing how such an outcome could affect the political landscape of 2012, with some surmising that a backlash against Republicans could follow a ruling against the law. But supporters argue that on a substantive level, the results would be devastating.
“This would be a great loss, obviously, to the American people,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) “The status quo with respect to the health insurance system was unacceptable to the American people. This was an answer to a very real problem.”
Judicial activists in the Supreme Court
By E.J. Dionne Jr.,
Three days of Supreme Court arguments over the health-care law demonstrated for all to see that conservative justices are prepared to act as an alternative legislature, diving deeply into policy details as if they were members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.Senator, excuse me, Justice Samuel Alito quoted Congressional Budget Office figures on Tuesday to talk about the insurance costs of the young. On Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts sounded like the House whip in discussing whether parts of the law could stand if other parts fell. He noted that without various provisions, Congress “wouldn’t have been able to put together, cobble together, the votes to get it through.” Tell me again, was this a courtroom or a lobbyist’s office?
It fell to the court’s liberals — the so-called “judicial activists,” remember? — to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/activist-judges-on-trial/2012/03/28/gIQAKdE2gS_print.html
NHS reforms finally become law
The Government's controversial reforms to the NHS
became law today after a tortuous 14-month passage through Parliament,
when the Queen granted Royal Assent to the Health and Social Care Bill.
became law today after a tortuous 14-month passage through Parliament,
when the Queen granted Royal Assent to the Health and Social Care Bill.
Deputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle's announcement in the House of Commons that assent had been given was greeted by cries of "shame" from opposition Labour MPs.
Our View: If health law overturned, what is the alternative?
Parts of the law are already helping Mainers, and its absence would leave holes to fill.
The Affordable Care Act was on trial in Washington this week, and we can only wait to find out the verdict. Opponents of the landmark health policy law they derisively call "Obamacare" have been emboldened by the tough questioning it faced Tuesday and Wednesday from the Supreme Court. The questioning raised the possibility that the whole law, or at least its central structural element, a requirement that almost everyone buy health insurance, will be struck down.
But if they get their wish, those elected officials should be prepared to answer some tough questions of their own. Even if the federal insurance market reforms passed two years ago go away, the underlying health care crisis the nation faces will not.
http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/if-health-law-overturned-what-is-the-alternative__2012-03-29.html
http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/if-health-law-overturned-what-is-the-alternative__2012-03-29.html
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