Rick Scott Says Florida Will Ignore SCOTUS Ruling On Obamacare: What About The People??

On June 28, 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court historically ruled Pres. Barack Obama's Affordable Health Care Act i.e., "Obamacare" to be Constitutional.

This includes the Mandatory Coverage provision which allows the Federal Government to Penalize Citizens who Refuse to purchase Health Care Insurance or who Refuse to Enroll in any kind of Health Care Insurance program, not excluding Medicaid & Medicare.

Many U.S. Presidents have tried however only one Truly Succeeded in Reforming our nation's Health Care Insurance System FOREVER.

Is it a Perfect Law?

Of Course Not!

However Perfect should NEVER be the enemy of what is Good.

Thus the Affordable Health Care Act is a Good Law which not only allows Children/ Dependents to remain on their Parents' Health Care Insurance plans until the age of 26, but also prohibits Health Care Insurance Companies from Denying Citizens the right for Coverage due to Pre-Existing Conditions.

The Affordable Health Care Act will Also help Create Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs in the Health Care Industry.

And......

Most Importantly it will ultimately within the next 3 years Lower Health Care Insurance Premiums, which will allow more Uninsured people to have Health Care Insurance Coverage versus using Hospital Emergency Rooms to receive Medical Care.

This is GREAT!!!

Absolutely GREAT!!!

Even Skeptics like myself agree that the SCOTUS decision to Uphold the Affordable Health Care Act was a Wonderful Decision!

Hold it!

Because Not everyone is celebrating.

Not everyone is happy to see Millions of Uninsured American Citizens have Affordable Access to Quality Health Care.

NOT Everyone!

Who isn't happy about this landmark legal decision?

Most GOP Leaders!

That's right!

Most GOP Leaders are Angry & Unhappy to see Millions of American Citizens have Access to Affordable, Quality Health Care in this Country.

Instead of celebrating & agreeing with the SCOTUS Decision on this ruling, they are plotting and scheming to Repeal the Affordable Health Care Act.

How Selfish & Stupid!

What about the PEOPLE who Elected them into Public Office?

What about the Millions of Uninsured, Underinsured, Sick people who will benefit from this ruling?

Don't they matter?

Apparently NOT!

Because Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, John Boehner & Michelle Bachmann are planning to use ALL of their Political Capital and more Taxpayer Money to Repeal the Affordable Health Care Act i.e,., "Obamacare".

GOP Leaders have now launched a Tax Mandate/ Repeal "Obamacare" Campaign to Defeat Pres. Obama this Fall and Completely Ignore the recent SCOTUS ruling of his Affordable Health Care Act.

This is So Sad!

Thus Regardless of whom this GOP Repeal Effort will harm (American Voters), GOP Leaders are Hell-bent on making the Affordable Health Care Act Obsolete.

Regardless of the fact that Mitt Romney created the Original Blue Print for the Affordable Health Care Act via "Romneycare", GOP Leaders are Laser-Focused on Obliterating "Obamacare".

By the way "Romneycare" has been Very Successful in the State of Massachusetts, with more than 98% of the Population in that State being Properly Insured and the Health Care Insurance Premiums more Affordable than in other states.

Regardless of the Hundreds of Thousands of Health Care Industry JOBS that will be
Destroyed, GOP Leaders are Determined to wipe the Affordable Health Care Act off the Face of this Earth.

Why?

Because Most GOP Leaders are using the Affordable Health Care Act to hide behind RACISM.

They HATE Pres. Obama and Everything he stands for due to him being a BLACK Leader.

If Mitt Romney or George W. Bush had Passed Comprehensive Health Care Legislation, everyone of those GOP Leaders currently Opposing the Affordable Health Care Act would be 100% on board with Romney or Bush.

However because a BLACK Man passed this Legislation (FOR THE PEOPLE), GOP Leaders are now Wroth with HATE.

And since the Affordable Health Care Act is Pres. Obama's Signature Legislation, the ONLY way those GOP Leaders can Eliminate his Existence & Legacy is to Repeal that Law.

Please correct me if I'm Wrong but since the SCOTUS has already ruled the Affordable Health Care Act to be Constitutional and LEGAL, I don't see how GOP Leaders can Ignore this Law or Repeal it.

Any effort by Congress to Repeal the Affordable Health Care Act would simply be Symbolic at best because the Law can NEVER legally be completely Repealed.

I believe GOP Leaders are LYING to the American People just to raise Money for Mitt Romney's Campaign.

Those GOP Leaders in Congress know good & well that they can NOT easily Repeal a Comprehensive Health Care Insurance Act that was Passed by Congress and Ruled Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

They know this!

So they have decided to LIE to Voters by attacking Justice John Roberts a Republican, launch a Massive Repeal "Obamacare" Campaign & Encourage Hospitals and Doctors to Largely Ignore the SCOTUS Health Care Law Ruling.

This is CRAZY!

I've often said that Racism makes people STUPID & Crazy, now I know its True.

It doesn't matter if Pres. Obama attempts to pass Financial Industry Reform, Comprehensive Education Reform, Student Loan Reform, Health Care Insurance Reform, Criminal Justice System Reform, Comprehensive Tax Reform, Affordable Housing Reform, Small Business Reform, Elderly Care Reform, Wall Street Reform, Tort Reform, Employment Discrimination Reform, etc.,

Whatever type of Meaningful Legislation Pres. Obama attempts to Pass, he will ALWAYS be blind-sided by Severe Political Opposition from some RACIST GOP & Democrat Leaders.

So what can the Democrats & Pres. Obama's Re-election team do to Diminish what GOP Leaders are plotting against the Affordable Health Care Act?

Democrats & Pres. Obama's Re-election team Need to Launch a Major Campaign to Educate the American People on ALL the Good, Effective Components & Provisions included within "Obamacare".

Educate the American VOTERS about why Justice John Roberts a True Conservative, decided to cast his Vote with the Court's so-called "Liberal" Justices.

Justice Roberts cast his Vote alongside Justice Kagan and Justice Sotomayor because the Affordable Health Care Act is Effective, Constitutional Legislation that will HELP All American Citizens including Many Children, have Access to Affordable, Quality Health Care without being Denied by Coverage Greedy Health Insurance Monopolies who previously used Pre-Existing Conditions to NOT Provide Insurance.

Democrats & Pres. Obama's Re-election team MUST Broadcast the Benefits of the Affordable Health Care Act from all 4 Corners of American Soil.

NORTH, SOUTH, EAST & WEST!!!!

Broadcast those Benefits Non-Stop from Now until the November Election!!

On June 28, 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Affordable Health Care Act to be CONSTITUTIONAL.

Thank You Pres. Obama!

Thank You Justice Roberts!!!

The American People Thank You Immensely!!!!






Gov. Scott says Florida will not comply with health care law or expand Medicaid

Florida Gov. Rick Scott now says Florida will do nothing to comply with President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and will not expand its Medicaid program.

The announcement is a marked changed after the governor recently said he would follow the law if it were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Florida is not going to implement Obamacare. We are not going to expand Medicaid and we're not going to implement exchanges,'' Scott's spokesman Lane Wright told The Associated Press on Saturday. Wright stressed that the governor would work to make sure the law is repealed.

Scott told Fox News the Medicaid expansion would cost Florida taxpayers $1.9 billion a year, but it's unclear how he arrived at that figure.

Scott said the state will not expand the Medicaid program in order to lower the number of uninsured residents, nor will Florida set up a state-run health exchange, a marketplace where people who need insurance policies could shop for them.

"We care about having a health care safety net for the vulnerable Floridians, but this is an expansion that just doesn't make any sense,'' he told Fox host Greta Van Susteren.

Scott has gone back and forth on the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Congress cannot withhold federal Medicaid funding from states that opt out of a requirement in the overhaul to expand coverage to those just above the poverty line.

On the day of the ruling Scott was cautious about the expansion, saying he wanted to read the ruling first.

Then during an interview Friday morning on a Jacksonville radio station, Scott said it was unlikely he would go along with the expansion because of the potential cost to the state.

But the governor told the Tampa Bay Times later in the day that he was still evaluating the ruling and would come up with a plan within a few weeks.

Scott, the former CEO of a hospital chain, has been a vocal critic of the health care overhaul from the start.

He made his first foray into politics by forming a group called Conservatives for Patients Rights that ran television ads criticizing the proposal before it was adopted by Congress.

Scott has also complained about the growing cost of Medicaid, the $21 billion safety net program that primarily aids the poor but also picks up nursing home bills for senior citizens.

The governor backed a push by the Republican-controlled Legislature to shift Medicaid patients into managed care programs, a move that is still awaiting federal approval.

Scott has rejected federal money in the past, most notably $2.4 billion for high speed rail. His administration has also said no to some money attached to the Affordable Care Act.

But Scott has said yes to money associated with the federal stimulus program and he has changed some of the positions he advocated during his run for governor.

Scott also must weigh the political calculations of saying no to Medicaid because of tight budgets, while it is likely he will continue to push for substantial tax cuts between now and his re-election campaign in 2014.

According to Census data released last year, Florida had the nation's third-highest rate of residents without health insurance during the past three years.

President Obama's health care law called for states in 2014 to expand Medicaid eligibility to those making up to 133 percent of the poverty level, or $29,326 for a family of four.
While estimates vary, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration has concluded that as many as 1.95 million more people would join Medicaid and other state-subsidized health insurance programs over the next five years.

Most of the cost, running into the billions, would be absorbed by the federal government.

The Medicaid expansion would not cost the state anything until 2017 — although AHCA estimates that changes to other state-subsidized programs would require state money starting in 2014.

AHCA estimates that the overall cost to the state would be $2.4 billion between 2013 and 2018 with the federal government picking up nearly $26 billion.

But other groups analyzing the potential changes contend that state officials have ``hyper-inflated'' the potential costs because they assume too many people will enroll.

The ultimate choice, however, won't be Scott's alone.

It will also be decided by the Legislature.






Republicans launch blitz against health care law

Republicans launched a blistering attack Friday on the health care reform law upheld by the Supreme Court, seeking to rally their base's opposition to the measure to bolster their fortunes in the November election.

Using the court's finding that the centerpiece of the law -- the individual mandate -- amounted to a legal exercise of congressional taxing power, GOP leaders accused President Barack Obama and Democrats of deceiving the nation about the Affordable Care Act during debate on the measure in 2009 and 2010.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky led the charge, saying Democrats used a "deeply dishonest sales pitch" to overcome public opposition to the measure back then.

"Nearly every day since then, the promises that formed the heart of that sales pitch have been exposed for the false promises they were," McConnell said on the Senate floor, adding that the Supreme Court decision Thursday provided "powerful confirmation of what may have been the biggest deception of all."

He urged Democrats to stop "trying to defend the indefensible" and join with Republicans to repeal the health care law.

Meanwhile, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, a tea party favorite and leading opponent of health care reform, said she and congressional colleagues were sending a letter to state officials urging them not to implement the health care bill until after the November vote.

"All across job creator boardrooms today, decisions are being made by millions of employers to drop the employer covered health insurance," Bachmann claimed Friday on CNN. "That's why we're telling the states just stop, take a breath, because we're going to turn the economy around after November."

The polarizing law is the signature legislation of Obama's time in office, and opposition to it helped spur the creation of the conservative tea party movement.
Friday's rhetoric by McConnell and other Republicans reflected their shock and anger at the high court decision, which rejected the challenges of opponents who contended the health care law was unconstitutional.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court decided the individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance was valid as a tax, even though it was impermissible under the Constitution's Commerce Clause.

The most anticipated Supreme Court ruling in years allows the government to continue implementing the health care law, which doesn't take full effect until 2014.

That means popular provisions that prohibit insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing medical conditions and allow parents to keep their children on family policies to the age of 26 will continue.

However, Republican opponents of the law's expansion of government vowed to continue fighting to repeal it, with certain presidential nominee Mitt Romney saying that defeating Obama in November is the only way to meet that goal.

Both presidential campaigns are citing fundraising spikes after the Supreme Court's decision.

Romney's organization said Friday that it had raised $4.6 million online, and Obama's operation, while not revealing specific numbers, said it had surpassed that total.

The individual mandate is the linchpin of the health care law signed by Obama in 2010 after an epic brawl in Congress in which no Republicans supported the measure.

Obama has denied that the mandate is a tax, including in a 2009 interview with ABC in which he compared it to state requirements that motorists carry auto insurance.

"Nobody considers that a tax increase," Obama said then. "People say to themselves, 'that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.' "

At least 4 million people are expected to pay a penalty for not having health insurance when the rule takes full effect in 2016, bringing in about $54 billion to help offset the $1.7 trillion, 10-year cost of the act, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

It's one of several revenue-raising provisions in the health care law, according to Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist and co-author of a 2010 book on the health care battle.

Under the health care law when it is fully implemented in coming years, most Americans will be covered by employee health plans, either their own or that of a head of household, or by existing government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid or veterans' benefits, Jacobs noted.

Of the roughly 6% of the population remaining, a large portion of those will be exempted from the mandate because of poverty, religious beliefs or other reasons, he said.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday that the fine for failing to have health insurance once the law is fully implemented is "a penalty, because you have a choice" of whether to obtain it.

"If you don't buy it, and you can afford it, it is an irresponsible thing to do to ask the rest of America's taxpayers to pay for your care when you go to the emergency room," Carney said. "So your choice is to purchase health (insurance), or a penalty will be administered."

Bachmann's allegation that the health care law would lead to fewer U.S. jobs was challenged on CNN by Democratic Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware.

"If they're not hiring, it's because they don't have demand," Markell said. "What they care most about when they're deciding whether to hire is where do they have access to the greatest work force. I mean, these charges are just ridiculous."

Democrats also noted that Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, implemented an individual mandate similar to the concept in the federal law.

Romney contends that the Massachusetts law was tailored to the state's needs and that such a solution was improper at the federal level.

He called the law known as Obamacare bad policy and a bad law on the federal level.

That didn't stop Democratic Rep. Steve Israel of New York from noting on CNN that Romney "actually defended what he called a penalty" during his term as Massachusetts governor.
"Not my words, Mitt Romney's words, were the free riders -- who chose not to get health insurance but shift those costs onto society -- need to pay their fair share," Israel said. "I didn't call them free riders. Mitt Romney did."

In Thursday's majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that "the federal government does not have the power to order people to buy health insurance. ... The federal government does have the power to impose a tax on those without health insurance."

Roberts joined the high court's liberal wing -- Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan -- in upholding the law.

Read the Ruling:

Four conservative justices -- Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas -- dissented.
"To say that the individual mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it," the dissenting justices wrote in their opinion. "Imposing a tax through judicial legislation inverts the constitutional scheme, and places the power to tax in the branch of government least accountable to the citizenry."

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday indicated that 37% of Americans would have been pleased if the law had been found unconstitutional, compared with 28% who would have been pleased if it had been found constitutional.

And the poll of 1,000 U.S. adults found that nearly four in 10 surveyed would have "mixed feelings" had the justices struck down the whole law.

Obama, in televised remarks, called Thursday's Supreme Court ruling a victory for the nation.

He used the focus on the issue to spell out the benefits of the law that remains unpopular with many Americans. The principle upheld by the high court's ruling is that no American should go bankrupt because of illness, the president said.

"I know the debate over this law has been divisive," Obama said. "It should be pretty clear that I didn't do this because it was good politics. I did it because I believe it is good for the country."

He said the country can't afford "to refight the political battle of two years ago or go back to the way things were."

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who helped push through the law when she was House speaker, cited the late Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, a longtime proponent of health care reform who died before the bill became law.

"Now he can rest in peace," she said, echoing what she'd earlier told Kennedy's widow by phone.

In his opinion, Roberts appeared to note the political divisions, writing that "we do not consider whether the act embodies sound policies."

"That judgment is entrusted to the nation's elected leaders," the opinion said. "We ask only whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to enact the challenged provisions."

The narrow focus of the ruling on key issues such as the individual mandate -- limiting it to taxing powers rather than general commerce -- represented the court's effort to limit the government's authority.

"The framers created a federal government of limited powers and assigned to this court the duty of enforcing those limits," Roberts wrote. "The court does so today."
In another part of Thursday's decision, the high court ruled that a part of the law involving Medicaid must change.

The law calls for an expansion of eligibility for Medicaid, which involves spending by the federal government and the states, and threatens to remove existing Medicaid funding from states that don't participate in the expansion. Thursday's ruling said the government must remove that threat.


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