OBAMACARE vs SCOTUS: Justice Sotomayor Grants Religious Organizations Exemption From Contraceptive Mandate (For Now)

#ObamacareMandate

Tuesday evening SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor Blocked the OBAMACARE Contraception Mandate.

She allowed Religious Organizations to be Exempt from the Contraception Mandate.

However she has given the OBAMA Admin until Friday to respond to her Ruling.

"Justice Blocks Contraception Mandate On Insurance In Suit by Nuns"

Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Obama administration from forcing some religious-affiliated groups to provide health insurance coverage of birth control or face penalties as part of the Affordable Care Act.

Acting at the request of an order of nuns in Colorado, Justice Sotomayor issued the stay just hours before the requirement was to go into effect on New Year’s Day. She gave the Obama administration until Friday to respond to the Supreme Court.

Justice Sotomayor’s order applies to the nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and other Roman Catholic nonprofit groups that use the same health plan, known as the Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Trust. The groups’ lawsuit is one of many challenging the federal requirement for contraceptive coverage, but a decision on the merits of that case by the full Supreme Court could have broader implications.

“We are delighted with the ruling,” said Mark L. Rienzi, a lawyer at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who represented the nuns in the lawsuit. “We are delighted that the Supreme Court will require the government to file briefs in the court on this matter.” The Little Sisters of the Poor operate nursing homes for low-income people in the United States and around the world.

Without Justice Sotomayor’s order, the nuns “would have been forced to comply with the contraceptive mandate on Wednesday or face large fines,” Mr. Rienzi said late Tuesday.

The contraception requirement has been one of the most controversial aspects of the health law since the Obama administration first announced it in mid-2011, along with other requirements it characterized as preventive care. Religious opponents of abortion have objected especially strongly to the requirement to provide emergency contraception pills, like Plan B, although most studies show that the drug works by preventing fertilization, not by inducing abortion.

In an effort to compromise, the administration said that women who work for nonprofit religious groups that object to birth control could receive separate coverage not paid for by the employers. It refused, however, to offer accommodations to secular businesses whose owners have religious objections to contraception.

That has led to a separate group of lawsuits. And last month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a pair of cases on whether corporations may refuse to provide insurance coverage for contraception.

Justice Sotomayor — who later was to lead the countdown for the Times Square ball drop — issued her order after the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, earlier on New Year’s Eve denied the nuns’ request for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of the contraceptive coverage requirements imposed by the new health care law.

The Obama administration had argued that the Little Sisters of the Poor could opt out of the contraceptive coverage requirement by completing “a self-certification form” and providing it to the entity that administers their health benefits. Therefore, the Justice Department said, the contraceptive mandate imposes “no substantial burden on their exercise of religion.”

“To opt out of providing contraceptive coverage, Little Sisters need only certify that they are nonprofit organizations that hold themselves out as religious and that, because of religious objections, they are opposed to providing coverage for some or all contraceptive services,” the Justice Department told the appeals court on Monday.

The administration says it has exempted churches from the contraceptive coverage requirement and offered an accommodation to certain religious nonprofit groups. But the Becket Fund argued that “the ‘accommodation’ still forces the Little Sisters to find an insurer who will cover sterilization, contraceptive and abortion-inducing drugs and devices.”

“The Sisters would also be required to sign a form that triggers the start of that coverage,” it said. “In good conscience, they cannot do that. So the ‘accommodation’ still violates their religious beliefs.”

The Obama administration has repeatedly defended the birth control requirement. “The president believes that no one, including the government or for-profit corporations, should be able to dictate those decisions to women,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said last month.

One of the pending Supreme Court cases was filed by Hobby Lobby, a corporation owned by a family whose members have said they try to run the business on Christian principles. The company, which operates a chain of arts-and-crafts stores and has more than 15,000 full-time employees of many faiths. Hobby Lobby has said it has no problem with offering coverage for many forms of contraception, including condoms, diaphragms, sponges, several kinds of birth control pills and sterilization surgery. But drugs and devices that can prevent embryos from implanting in the womb are another matter, and make it complicit in a form of abortion, the company said.

The other case was filed by the Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation, which makes wood cabinets and is owned by a Mennonite family that had similar objections to the law.

Sources: AP, NY Times, TIME Magazine

Jeffrey Toobin Is Right! Individual Mandate Makes Health Care Law Unconstitutional

CNN's Jeffrey Toobin is extremely Cocky however he's right about the Health Care Law. The Individual Mandate makes it Unconstitutional.

Here's why.

Its highly possible that come June the SCOTUS will strike down Pres. Obama's Affordable Health Care Act.

NOT because its a Bad Law because the Affordable Health Care Act is in all actuality a really Good Universal Law.

For example the Affordable Health Care Act prevents Health Insurers from Denying Coverage to Citizens with Pre-Existing Medical Conditions & allows Children to remain on their Parent's Health Insurance plans until the age of 26.

The Law also requires States to provide more Medicaid/ Medicare Coverage & Quality Patient Care for Low Income & Elderly Citizens.
i.e., Medicaid Expansion.

However....

Just because a Law is Good does not mean it is Constitutional.

And SCOTUS Justices are Legally Bound to rule solely based on the U.S. Constitution & Similar Federal Case Law.

According to the Preamble & U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, Health Care is in fact a Basic Human Right but Congress does NOT have the Broad Legal Authority to Mandate each Individual Citizen in America to take Personal Responsibility for their Own Health Care Insurance via a TAX.

That's Right!

The Individual Mandate is a TAX!

According to the 16th Amendment Congress does have the Legal Authority to TAX but it Can't use its Taxing Authority to Penalize American Citizens for NOT Purchasing Health Care Insurance.

If Pres. Obama had included a Public Option or Single Payer Option, his Affordable Health Care would be probably be very hard for the SCOTUS to strike down.

But in the "Spirit of Bi-Partisanship" he allowed 2 GOP Senators, (Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins), to talk him into excluding a Public Option & Single Payer in exchange for the Individual Mandate.

Bad Political Move!

Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins have both served in Congress much Longer than Pres. Obama.
They're Slick Politicians who knew exactly what they were doing!

Requesting that Pres. Obama exclude a Public Option & Single Payer in exchange for the Individual Mandate was Politically Strategic & Destructive for the Affordable Health Care Law because Snowe & Collins knew a Mandate would make this Law Unconstitutional.

A Shrewd, Dirty Political Move pulled by 2 Seasoned, Female, GOP Senators!

Now Suddenly two years later, Senator Olympia Snowe claims she was "against the Individual Mandate".

Please STOP Lying Olympia!

If you were against the Individual Mandate then why did you Vote "YES" on passage of the Health Care Law?

Almost immediately After the Affordable Health Care Law was Authorized by Congress, Pres. Obama's Administration started granting Waivers to Certain Large Corporations giving them Legal Permission to Opt-Out of Providing Health Care Insurance to their Employees without being Penalized.

This Action Hurt the Law's Viability even more so because granting Corporations Waivers to Opt-Out of the Law gave the Appearance of Proprietorship or Enforcement of the Law based on Economic Status.

Is it Fair to force Smaller, Less Profitable Companies to provide Health Care Insurance for their Employees, while allowing Larger, More Profitable Companies to Opt-Out?

Thus the valid concerns mentioned in this post about Pres. Obama's Health Care Law, means the Probability of this law being struck down by the High Court remains a very likely possibility.

Its not yet clear if the Affordable Health Care Act can stand alone without the Individual Mandate.

I personally believe the Law can Survive without the Individual Mandate but only with a Public Option.

Its also not clear if the entire Affordable Health Care Act will be struck down or just the Individual Mandate.

What is clear is that although the Affordable Health Care Law is a good law, Congress may have overstepped its Broad Legal Authority by Including a New Tax as a Penalty within this Law.

Stay Tuned.

SCOTUS Justices will release their decision & Opinions on the Health Care Law Challenge case in June of this year.



Toobin: 'This Law Looks Like It's Going To Be Struck Down'

CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin, following Supreme Court arguments on President Obama's health care law, said on CNN that based on what he heard inside the Court, things didn't look good for proponents of the law.

"This was a train wreck for the Obama administration," he said. "This law looks like it's going to be struck down. I'm telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong... if I had to bet today I would bet that this court is going to strike down the individual mandate."

Toobin added that he felt that U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli simply wasn't prepared for the conservative justices.

"I don't know why he had a bad day," he said. "He is a good lawyer, he was a perfectly fine lawyer in the really sort of tangential argument yesterday. He was not ready for the answers for the conservative justices."

Toobin also said he thought Justice Kennedy, the perennial swing vote, was a "lost cause" for supporters of the health care reform law.


Sources: CNN, Fox News, TPM, Youtube

13 Attorney Generals Sue Gov't For "Unconstitutional" Health Care Mandate...Commerce

Suing States:

Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington and Colorado.

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Thirteen GOP State AGs Sue Obama Over Health Bill


The ink is still drying on the health care overhaul bill signed into law Tuesday by President Barack Obama, but attorneys general from 13 states have filed a lawsuit to challenge the legislation.

The lawsuit was filed immediately after the president's signing ceremony Tuesday. It names the U.S. departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury and Labor.

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Attorneys Generals from Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington and Colorado are joining in. Other GOP attorneys general may join the lawsuit later or sue separately.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is taking the lead in the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Pensacola.

One issue at the heart of the suit is the constitutionality of the the so-called "individual mandate," which requires most Americans to have an insurance plan or else pay a federal penalty.

The Constitution gives Congress the authority "to regulate commerce." In other words, once someone engages in commerce, the government has the power to regulate that activity.

But opponents say that the "commerce Clause" does not give the government power to require an individual to buy something — especially insurance for the health of one's own body.

Some legal experts agree.

"Never in this nation's history has the commerce power been used to require a person who does nothing, to engage in economic activity," said Professor Randy Barnett of Georgetown University Law Center.

Mandating that all Americans purchase health insurance is akin to "requiring" every American to buy a new Chevy Impala every year," to help the automobile industry, Barnett said.

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Other law scholars argue that Congress does have the power to regulate activities that have a cumulative effect on the economy.

"When uninsured people get sick, they rely on their families for financial support, go to emergency room [often passing on costs to others], or purchase over-the-counter remedies. said Professor Jack Balkin of Yale Law School. "All these effects are economic."

Because Congress believes national health care reform won't succeed unless the uninsured are brought into national risk pools, it can constitutionally regulate their activities, Balkin said.

Another legal issue being debated involves the government's taxing authority.

Supporters of the insurance requirement say that it constitutes a tax, not a personal mandate, and that the Constitution gives Congress broad power to tax.

"Challenges to tax laws succeed only when taxes directly or indirectly burden the exercise of fundamental rights, and there is no fundamental right to be uninsured," says Professor Mark Hall of Wake Forest University.

But Barnett and other opponents of the individual mandate say the tax is actually a penalty for not having insurance. It's a fine, they say, not a tax.

"On this theory any fine can be called a 'tax' and Congress can regulate anything at all," Barnett said.






How To Kill Obama's Health Care Law In Federal Court


With the Health Care bill passed, Conservatives are now plotting a legal challenge. Constitutional law professor Adam Winkler on what the Republicans are going to argue and why they might win.


After months of contentious debate, the House narrowly passed landmark health-care legislation on Sunday. But the war over health care is hardly over. Republican attorneys general of several states have announced they will challenge Obamacare in court. The law, they say, is unconstitutional.

The argument against the health-care bill focuses on the so-called individual mandate. This is the part of the bill that tries to push everyone into the health- insurance market, including young, healthy people who otherwise might go uninsured. The idea is to reduce the total cost of health care by including everyone in the insurance pool.

Opponents claim that Congress has no authority to require people to buy insurance. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett argues that the law is “unprecedented” because it forces individuals to “engage in an economic transaction with a private company.” The crux of the argument is that the individual mandate exceeds Congress’s constitutional authority “to regulate commerce... among the several states.”

The power to regulate interstate commerce is one of the most important powers of Congress and is the basis for most federal laws, including Medicare, Social Security, drug laws, civil-rights laws, and others. Since the 1930s, the Supreme Court has said that Congress’s commerce power is very broad and can be used to justify regulation of nearly any activity that substantially impacts interstate commerce.

Mandating individuals to purchase health insurance, opponents claim, isn’t a regulation of economic activity. According to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, “We contend that if a person decides not to buy health insurance, that person—by definition—is not engaging in commerce and, therefore, is not subject to a federal mandate.”

Yet people who fail to buy health insurance are engaging in economic activity. They are making an economic decision to self-insure. If they fall ill, they usually find that they can’t afford medical care and visit an emergency room. Or they go without care, allow their condition to worsen, and then get taken to an emergency room. In either case, the American people foot the bill. The national economic consequences of individuals deciding to go without insurance are enormous.

Even if self-insuring could be construed as non-economic activity, the individual mandate is still within Congress’s commerce power. The High Court has held on numerous occasions that Congress can regulate non-economic activity as part of a larger, comprehensive effort to regulate some aspect of our national economy. Just a few years ago, the Supreme Court held that Congress, as part of its effort to stamp out interstate commerce in illegal drugs, could prohibit a person from growing marijuana in his own home for his own use. The court has also said that Congress, as part of regulation of wheat prices, can limit the amount of wheat a farmer grows on his own land for his personal use.

With health care, controlling precedent seems to clearly allow Congress, as part of its comprehensive effort to regulate the interstate health-care market, to require individuals to have insurance coverage. Even if the decision to go without insurance is not economic activity, Congress can reach it because health care profoundly affects interstate commerce.

Yet there is a more serious flaw in the commerce power argument of health care’s opponents. Congress can justify the mandate on a different power entirely: the taxing power. The individual mandate, after all, is a tax provision. It doesn’t really require individuals to purchase insurance; no one is thrown in jail simply for going uninsured. If people fail to buy insurance, they are hit with a tax. Someone dead-set against buying insurance can choose to remain without coverage and pay the tax. Such a choice is not exactly “free.” A person’s decision to smoke isn’t free either. Thanks to taxes, the choice is pretty expensive.

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Because the individual mandate is a tax provision that promotes the general welfare, it is within Congress’ taxing power. This is one of broadest grants of authority the Constitution gives Congress. For decades, the Supreme Court has said that Congress can impose any tax reasonably designed to promote the public good. So long as a reasonable lawmaker could believe the general welfare is served by expanding the pool of covered individuals, reducing dependence on emergency rooms, and lowering the total costs of health care, then the individual mandate tax is constitutional.

Still, opponents say, Congress can’t penalize someone for doing nothing. Sure it can. And it does every year. If you don’t believe me, just “do nothing” this April 15 when your tax bill is due. With a handful of exceptions, all individuals are required to file a tax return with the Internal Revenue Service and if you choose instead to do nothing you will be penalized for it. If Congress can penalize you for failing to file a tax return, it can penalize you for failing to have health insurance.

Are opponents correct that Congress has never before required large numbers of people to purchase something? No. In fact, the Founding Fathers themselves included an “individual mandate” in a law way back in 1792. The Militia Acts were a series of bills that first organized state militias in America’s early years that required “free able-bodied” men to serve with their own gun. It didn’t matter to the Founding Fathers if someone preferred to spend his money elsewhere. He was required to have a gun, even if that gun had to be purchased from a private seller.

People often assume the Founders thought Congress’s powers were very narrow. But even they thought it was acceptable to impose an individual mandate to buy something on a large number of citizens when necessary for the public welfare. If Congress’s power over state militias could justify an individual mandate to buy something, so would Congress’s power over interstate commerce or over taxes.

Even some legal conservatives admit that the arguments against the bill are very weak. Given these strong precedents, why would anyone believe the Supreme Court would still invalidate the individual mandate? Because in politically divisive cases, the courts are rarely shy about breaking from precedent. This is especially so when the justices don’t agree politically with the results that case law would seem to require.

In the 1800s, a conservative Supreme Court struck down the Missouri Compromise, a federal law that restricted the spread of slavery into western territories. Although the Constitution clearly gives Congress power to regulate federal territories, the Dred Scott Court essentially ignored this grant of authority. The justices thought that new territories had the right to choose for themselves whether to be slave or free—and sought to issue a ruling that would end the divisiveness occasioned by slavery. It didn’t quite work out the way they were hoping.



Liberals do it too. In the 1950s, a liberal Supreme Court broke from 70 years of precedent to strike down “separate but equal” in public education. It hardly mattered that those who added the equality guarantee to the Constitution favored racial segregation in schools—or that the court had repeatedly upheld Jim Crow segregation laws.

But we don’t have to go so far back in time to find examples. Earlier this year, the Roberts Court invalidated a campaign-finance law that banned corporations from spending shareholders’ money to influence federal elections. Such laws have been a prominent feature of campaign-finance law for over a century. The court itself had upheld corporate political spending restrictions in candidate elections, the very provision upheld less than a decade ago by the Rehnquist Court.

In cases from abortion rights to affirmative action, the Roberts Court has already shown itself to be one of the most activist courts in recent memory. The court’s conservatives aren’t any more likely to support President Obama’s health-care agenda than the conservatives in Congress. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote on the court, is known to be a libertarian who probably won’t find much to like in the individual mandate.

Health-care opponents’ arguments against the law are without merit. But that doesn’t mean those arguments won’t be successful in the Supreme Court.


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How Obama's Health Care System Changes Will Affect You

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Sources: MSNBC

36 Million People Covered! Pelosi: "Employers Will Be Required To Offer Insurance"

(Pelosi to unveil new health package. A Morning Meeting panel discusses the House health reform bill and whether the compromises within it will secure enough votes or continue to alienate progressives.)

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(Choose or lose a Public Option. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., discusses why it’s taking so long to restructure the health reform bill into a way in which the consumers have a choice in health care coverage.)

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Pelosi unveils $894B House health plan


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says new health care legislation will make affordable, quality health care available to nearly all Americans and represents a historic step.

Pelosi made the remarks on the West Front of the Capitol surrounded by Democratic lawmakers.

The retooled health overhaul bill she presented Thursday delivers on many of President Barack Obama's goals for reshaping the U.S. health care system. It represents months of negotiations to bridge differences between liberal and moderate Democrats.

The bill would extend coverage to 36 million more Americans, bar insurance companies from denying coverage based on health history and require employers to offer coverage to their workers. Anti-abortion protesters briefly disrupted Pelosi's remarks.

Pelosi, D-Calif., wants to have the legislation on the floor next week, with a final vote before Veterans Day, Nov. 11, that would give Obama a bill to sign by year's end, numerous Democratic officials said.

The bill would require nearly everyone by 2013 to sign up for health coverage either through their employer, a government program or a new kind of purchasing pool called an exchange. Tax credits would be available for most of those buying coverage through the exchange. They would have the option of picking a new government plan or private insurance.

During the transition years from 2010-2013, a temporary government program would help people turned down by private insurers because of medical problems, lawmakers said. After that, insurers no longer could refuse to provide coverage to the sick, nor could they charge more because of poor health of the insured.

The plan also calls for a significant expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health program for low-income people. And it would impose a requirement on employers to offer insurance to their workers or face penalties.

A concession to Democratic moderates appears to have cleared a path for Pelosi to move forward. Democratic leaders agreed to the moderates' demand that the new government insurance plan must negotiate payment levels with hospitals and doctors, instead of imposing its rates, as liberal lawmakers would have preferred.

"This has always been a matter of trying to pull together 218 votes," said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., referring to the number needed to guarantee passage on the House floor. "There is growing confidence that we can pass it with strong Democratic support."

No Republicans are expected to vote for the sweeping legislation, which would raise taxes on upper-income earners and cut Medicare payments to insurers, hospitals and other providers to cover a price tag that tops $1 trillion over 10 years.

"Americans' health care is too important to risk on one gigantic bill that was negotiated behind closed doors," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich. "The Medicare cuts will hurt seniors, the tax increases will kill jobs and the government takeover of health care will increase premium costs.

The bill's rollout caps months of arduous talks to resolve differences between liberals and moderates and blend health care overhaul bills passed by three committees over the summer.

The House package reflects many of Obama's priorities, but plenty of work remains to be done before Congress can send him a bill to sign. The House bill differs markedly from legislation taking shape in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is trying to round up support among moderate Democrats for a modified government insurance option that states could opt out of.

Pelosi has also said the bill would strip the health insurance industry of a long-standing exemption from antitrust laws covering market allocation, price fixing and bid rigging. Democratic officials said the bill also would give the Federal Trade Commission authority to look into the health insurance industry at its own initiative.

"I'm pretty confident that we've got the right pieces in place," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, one of the three panels involved in writing the bill. "We can quibble over parts of it, but the fact is when you're taking a 60-year-old system that grew up in a rather haphazard fashion and you're trying to bring some coherence to it, these are sort of the things you have to do at the beginning of that process."

If Obama does get to sign a health overhaul bill, he will have bucked decades of failed attempts by past administrations, most recently by former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. There's still no guarantee that Congress can complete the legislation before year's end, as the president wants.

Democratic leaders in the House still face disputes over prohibiting taxpayer money for abortions and health care for illegal immigrants, issues they hoped to resolve after the bill's unveiling.



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