Obamacare Saved Again! Thanks ... Boofs O'Kavanaugh And Amy Comet Ping Pong?
We have ... good news? ... about the Supreme Court and Obamacare? And it is that they ... upheld it? And it wasn't even close, but more like 7-2, or rather exactly 7-2? And Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh sided with ... the few remaining good people on the Court? And so did Clarence Thomas?
OK, well, we are clearly having a hallucination spell and are about to die of consumption, so we'll just take the rest of the day off. Or not.
Anyway, congratulations to the 20 million Americans who wouldn't have healthcare without Obamacare! You dodged the GOP's firing squad this time, again! Take a five-minute rest from your life of constant panic! You've earned it!
The Supreme Court didn't even rule on the big question in this case, California v. Texas, which was whether the individual mandate is constitutional now that Republicans in Congress have zeroed out the tax penalty for failing to get insurance coverage. All these motherfucker Republican attorneys general really wanted the Court to seriously consider their argument that if the Obamacare mandate was a tax (which the Court ruled it was in 2012), and the tax was now zero dollars (which is what the GOP Congress did to it), then ipso facto NO TAX, NO CONSTITUTIONAL! Therefore please kill the entire law.
Instead the court ruled that Texas and the other Republican states taking their 954th whack at murdering Obamacare failed to show they had suffered any kind of injury, which is required to show standing, therefore fuck off.
Zoe Tillman is a very good court-splainer, so let's cheat off her paper:
The majority concluded that Texas and the other Republican state attorneys general who sued lacked standing to bring the case at all, a ruling that brought the yearslong fight to an end without delving into the substance of the latest challenge to the healthcare law. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the opinion, which was also joined by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
The ACA's many provisions that transformed the US healthcare system will remain intact — including insurers being blocked from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions, regulated individual insurance markets, and an expansion of Medicaid plans to millions of people with low incomes.
Wonkette explained this case back in November, noting that three questions were at hand, all of which had to be answered with a "yes" for the asshole Republicans to win: 1) Do the states suing even have standing? 2) Is the mandate unconstitutional as now currently constituted? and 3) if it's unconstitutional, is that provision severable from the rest of the law, or does the entire baby have to be thrown out with the bathwater? Because the answer to the first question was "go fuck a lake you dumb idiots," the rest are moot.
So many Republicans going to court these days and saying "WAAAAAAAAAAH!" And judges look at them and say "Show us where this hurt you. Did something unconstitutional happen to you?" And they say "WAAAAAAAAAH!" And judges say GTFO.
They tried:
The Republican states tried to argue that the individual mandate penalty — despite being $0 — increased their financial burden by driving more people to join state medical insurance programs.
But the court said:
"Neither logic nor evidence suggests that an unenforceable mandate will cause state residents to enroll in valuable benefits programs that they would otherwise forgo."
Oh, those pesky logic and evidence requirements!
The justices ruled that granting standing in a case like this would essentially give the courts a blank check to overturn legislation. "It would threaten to grant unelected judges a general authority to conduct oversight of decisions of the elected branches of Government," says the ruling.
Of course, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch were pretty sure the Republican attorneys general had proven they were very "injury" by this and therefore should have ruled on the case and murdered Obamacare,. But when not even Boofs O'Kavanaugh and Amy Comet Ping Pong are buying your shit, you might want to get some new shit.
We are just saying.
Read the rest of Tillman's piece if you are into knowing things.
[California v. Texas / BuzzFeed]
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter.
Wonkette is funded ENTIRELY by a few thousand people like you. If you're not already, would you pls consider being the few thousandth and one?
Evan Hurst is the managing editor of Wonkette, which means he is the boss of you, unless you are Rebecca, who is boss of him. His dog Lula is judging you right now.
Follow him on Twitter RIGHT HERE.
