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发帖数: 6571 | 1 August 22, 2016
How Obama Hoodwinked the Supreme Court on Obamacare
By Hollis Hurd
In the case of King v. Burwell, decided by the Supreme Court in June of 2015
, President Obama won the day by convincing six justices that Obamacare
would collapse if he lost. The case involved the so-called "individual
mandate," which imposes a financial penalty on those who neglect to buy
health insurance. To many observers, the wording of Affordable Care Act
seemed to impose the financial penalty only in states where a state exchange
had been set up, not in states where the federal exchange operated by
default.
At that time, only 16 states (and the District of Columbia) had set up state
exchanges; the federal exchange covered the remaining 34 states. Thus, the
specter was presented of no financial penalty for not buying health
insurance in the 34 states covered only by the federal exchange. The
president argued forcefully that, absent the penalty, healthy individuals in
those 34 states might well choose not to buy insurance. Instead, only the
sick would buy insurance, which would send the health insurance system into
a death spiral and destroy Obamacare.
Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Roberts agreed with the president's
argument that, despite doubts about the text of Obamacare, the financial
penalty is vitally necessary to avoid a death spiral. Roberts therefore
opined that the financial penalty applies not only in states that
established state exchanges (as the statute says), but also in states where
individuals are covered only by the federal exchange. To many observers,
the decision seemed to be purely result-oriented – rescuing Obamacare from
a death spiral – rather than drawn from the text of the law.
Fast-forward to today, just a little over one year later. Insurers are
announcing on practically a weekly basis that they are trimming or even
eliminating their Obamacare coverage in more and more states. They give as
the reason that healthy individuals are not buying insurance under Obamacare
as expected, thus triggering a death spiral. Wait! What? Didn't the
Supreme Court protect Obamacare against a death spiral by deciding, as the
president argued, that the individual mandate applies in every state,
regardless of whether it has a state exchange or the federal exchange? What
is happening?
That's easy. The ACA exempted from the individual mandate a modest number
of individuals in several categories. But the ACA left the barn door wide
open with the last category: "[a]ny applicable individual who for any month
is determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services ... to have
suffered a hardship with respect to capability to obtain coverage under a
qualified health plan." That is the so-called "hardship" exemption.
The Obama administration then took it upon themselves to issue regulations
defining "hardship" in such expansive terms that huge swathes of the
population are exempt from the individual mandate. You heard that right:
after pleading with the Supreme Court to make sure that the individual
mandate applies nationwide, so as to avoid a death spiral, the
administration has itself triggered a death spiral by issuing regulations
exempting tens of millions from the individual mandate.
For 2015, the list of exemptions invented by the bureaucrats and said to
represent "hardship" relieving the individual from the individual mandate
includes:
- homelessness,
- eviction within the past six months,
- facing eviction or foreclosure (even if not evicted yet),
- received a shutoff notice from a utility company,
- experienced domestic violence,
- death of a close family member,
- fire or flood or other disaster that caused substantial damage to your
property whether natural or man-made,
- filed for bankruptcy within the past six months,
- medical expenses within the last 24 months that you couldn't afford to pay,
- unexpected increases in expenses due to caring for a family member who was
ill or disabled or just aging,
- a child has no medical coverage because some other person is responsible (
by court order) but has not paid,
- ineligibility for Medicaid because your state did not expand eligibility
under Obamacare, or
- your individual insurance plan was cancelled and you believe other
marketplace plans are unaffordable.
Those who are uninsured who can't find a way to fit into one of those
categories just aren't trying. But just in case they can't, the regulations
let them make up their own category: any other hardship that prevented them
from obtaining health insurance.
The effect of the hardship exemption has been to eliminate any financial
pressure on millions of individuals to buy health insurance under Obamacare.
The Congressional Budget Office issued a report in June of 2014 that said,
"[A]bout 30 million nonelderly residents will be uninsured in 2016 but ...
23 million uninsured people in 2016 will qualify for one or more of those
exemptions. Of the remaining 7 million uninsured people, CBO and JCT
estimate that some will be granted exemptions from the penalty because of
hardship or other reasons[.] ... All told, CBO and JCT estimate that [only]
about 4 million people [out of the 30 million uninsured] will pay a penalty
because they are uninsured in 2016." The Wall Street Journal summed it up
on August 6, 2014: "[a]lmost 90% of the national's 30 million uninsured won'
t pay a penalty under the Affordable Care Act in 2016 because of a growing
batch of exemptions to the health-coverage requirements."
Well played, Mr. President. You got the decision you wanted from the
Supreme Court by frightening them with the specter of a death spiral, and
then you directed the issuance of regulations shielding almost all of the
uninsured from the individual mandate, thus guaranteeing the very death
spiral that you warned against so vigorously in the Supreme Court. And now,
as insurers are announcing their departure from Obamacare due to lack of
participation by healthy individuals, you're leaving the White House, so it'
s someone else's problem. As Charlie Sheen might have said, "Winning!"
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/08/how_obama_hoodwinked_the_supreme_court_on_obamacare.html#ixzz4I4JGhENg
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发帖数: 29853 | 2 中心思想，这篇文章深刻地揭露了Obama care的致命弱点，同时还把左派的社会主义思
维暴露在读者眼前。
简单说，就是Obama说谁不买保险，就罚款。还得到了高院的支持。问题是，现在丫又
不断地开例外同意某些人群不买保险。从而让Obama保险没钱了。
丫把一切的权力集中在自己手里，完全由丫个人来决定，谁应该买保险，谁又可以不买
。可以不买的还得三呼万岁，皇恩浩荡。 |
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