Free Republic

A new book on Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts offers new details of his negotiation with liberal justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer to save ObamaCare ahead of the court's landmark ruling in 2012, according to excerpts released on CNN. In Joan Biskupic's "The Chief" which is scheduled to release next Thursday, she writes that Roberts originally opposed upholding the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate that required people to buy insurance, and cast his initial vote to strike it down, but he did join the liberal justices in voting to uphold Medicaid expansion, according to the book. He later...

Summary: Chief Justice John Roberts was threatened by Obama to change his vote on Obamacare according to new details in John Podesta's wikileaks emails. Also, Podesta wished a white guy named Chris Hayes was the shooter in San Bernardino instead of the Muslim Sayeed Farouk. 3 days before Antonin Scalia's death Podesta talked about "wet works" which is a KGB term for assassination. Obama was in on the emails and knew about it which is why he insulated himself from prosecution by appointing Loretta Lynch and keeping James Comey as FBI Director. All groping stories have been proven false through...

"it was pretty critical that the President threw the gauntlet down last time on the Court, warning them in the first case that it would politicize the role of the Court for them to rule against the ACA. As a close reader of the case, I honestly believe that was vital to scaring Roberts off"

ObamaCare has survived two high-profile trips to the Supreme Court largely unscathed, but a legal challenge that has so far attracted little attention poses a serious threat to the law.

For those who thought that the lawsuits challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) were at an end, think again. On September 9, Judge Rosemary Collyer of the federal district court for the District of Columbia refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the entire U.S. House of Representatives against the Obama administration over its funding of certain aspects of Obamacare. This is a historic lawsuit and a historic decision. In the past, individual members of Congress have filed a number of (unsuccessful) lawsuits against sitting administrations. But this is one of the few occasions when such a suit has been...

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that health insurance consumers can receive federal subsidies regardless of their state’s role in running their insurance market, fewer states may stay in the game.When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, most people expected that each state would want to run its own health insurance marketplace. That never really happened, as many states opted to let the federal system, HealthCare.gov, do the work for them. Many of those states that did try running their own marketplaces are starting to think twice.Now, with the Supreme Court ensuring that every state’s consumers will have...

The logic of the Supreme Court ruling upholding the latest challenge to Obamacare is simple: “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not destroy them,” writes Chief Justice John Roberts in his 6-3 majority decision in the case of King v. Burwell. “If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.” This is obviously true — and patently ridiculous. It’s true because of course the goal was to improve markets. It’s absurd because government policies often have the opposite effect of what is...

Soon after the Supreme Court salvaged a key part of the nation’s Affordable Care Act on Thursday, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe was rallying the troops in the state capital to expand Medicaid under the law.“[N]ow is the time to drop cynical efforts to prevent families from accessing care that will make their lives better,” McAuliffe said in a written statement. “With this issue decided, I hope we can now put partisan politics aside and . . . close the coverage gap.”McAuliffe (D) led a pitched and ultimately unsuccessful battle to add 400,000 uninsured Virginians to the Medicaid rolls during his first year...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act, Minnesota critics of the health care law are not ending their fight to repeal it. And state Republican leaders are calling for an immediate halt to any more spending on MNsure, the state’s health care exchange. “There’s no reason to continue throwing good money after bad at this point,” Minnesota State Rep. Tara Mack said.

Ted Cruz is planning to battle his party over Obamacare again — this time, if Senate Republicans seek to extend subsidies that could be killed by the Supreme Court as soon as this month. In an interview with POLITICO, the 2016 presidential candidate weighed in on the high-stakes Supreme Court case that could end subsidies for millions of people who receive their health insurance through the federal exchange. A majority of Republican senators have endorsed an approach to keep those subsidies in place until September 2017, but Cruz flatly said “no” when asked if he’d sign on as well. “I...

President Obama will tout his healthcare law Tuesday to a Catholic group that has consistently supported the law despite deep divides over its birth control requirement. In a speech to the Catholic Health Association — which represents hundreds of hospitals and nursing homes across the U.S. — the president will talk about the law's major tenets and make his case that it has improved health plans for virtually everyone, in addition to expanding coverage to millions. The address comes just days before the Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling that could halt the healthcare law's insurance subsidies to...

President Obama defended his signature healthcare law before the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a ruling on Obamacare subsidies, telling the conference of the Catholic Health Association in Washington today that “Chicken Little warnings” haven’t come true. (Snip) “We need more governors and state legislatures to expand Medicaid, which was a central part of the architecture of the overall plan,” Obama said today. “We need more governors and state legislatures to expand Medicaid, which was a central part of the architecture of the overall plan.” “There’s something, I have to say, just deeply cynical about the ceaseless,

President Obama delivered a sharply critical speech today at the Catholic Health Association Conference, blasting his critics for ignoring what he calls the “reality” that Obamacare is here to stay. “The critics stubbornly ignore reality,” he said, boasting that since Obamacare was passed, jobs actually increased and opened up health care to millions.

Tuesday in Washington D.C. at the the Catholic Health Association’s annual assembly, President Barack Obama defended his Affordable Care Act saying it was a “critical part” of his administration’s attempt to “restore the basic promise of America.”

The intent of Obamacare is clear, and the law “doesn’t need fixing”, President Obama told a news conference in Germany on Monday. “There is no reason why the existing exchanges should be overturned through a court case,” he insisted, just days before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on a case that could eliminate subsidies for people who got their insurance through the federal exchange. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, said laws should be interpreted based on their “intent”: “And under well-established statutory interpretation approaches that have been repeatedly employed, not just by liberal Democratic judges, but by...

[Obama's Death Panels law] hangs in the balance in the Supreme Court for the second time in three years, but the public has rendered a judgment ahead of the court's ruling. By a margin of 55 percent to 38 percent, more people say the court should not take action to block federal subsidies in states that didn't set up their own exchanges, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll..... ....The survey finds opinion on the health-care law among the worst in Post-ABC polling; 54 percent oppose, up six percentage points from a year ago. Support ties the record low...

House conservatives are hinting at support for a temporary extension of Obama-Care subsidies if the Supreme Court cripples the law, even as they set up a working group to develop their own plan. The high court is set to rule later this month in the case of King v. Burwell, which could invalidate subsidies for millions of people in at least 34 states using the federally run marketplace. Republicans say they need to be ready to address people losing their coverage, but have yet to coalesce around a plan. Now another proposal is in the works. Members of the conservative...

House conservatives are hinting at support for a temporary extension of Obama-Care subsidies if the Supreme Court cripples the law, even as they set up a working group to develop their own plan. The high court is set to rule later this month in the case of King v. Burwell, which could invalidate subsidies for millions of people in at least 34 states using the federally run marketplace. Republicans say they need to be ready to address people losing their coverage, but have yet to coalesce around a plan.

Greta:Off the Record By the end of June, the US Supreme Court could make a ruling that impacts 8 million people on ObamaCare - and the Obama administration has no contingency plan

With less than one month to go until the Supreme Court issues a ruling in King v. Burwell -- the case that could dismantle Obamacare -- some states are preparing contingency plans to avert a disaster if the court strikes down access to federally subsidized health care for their residents. If the Court rules against the administration and says that language in the Affordable Care Act only provides subsidies to people enrolled in coverage in states that set up their own marketplaces, some 7.5 million people in the 34 states relying on the federal exchange would lose their subsidized coverage...