Supreme Court upholds Obamacare mandate
In the landmark ruling of 5-4, President Obama’s Health Care Reform was supported on Thursday as the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the controversial health care law.
Official photo of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts by Steve Petteway, public domain
CNN reports that an administration official described the White House reaction as elation, while GOP opponents criticized the high court’s reasoning and promised an immediate repeal effort. Certain Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign reported an immediate fund-raising spike of $300,000.
“By this August, nearly 13 million of you will receive a rebate from your insurance company because it spent too much on thing like administration and CEO bonuses and not enough on your healthcare,” Obama said.
Each state will decide its “own menu of options” and they’re welcome to come up with more ways to cover more people and improve costs, Obama said.
The president said he respects concerns about the bill and he understands that people are worried that it was politically driven, but he said it should be clear by now he didn’t push for the act because it was “good politics.
“I did it because I believed it was good for the American people,” he said.
The individual mandate will not be upheld under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, but will be upheld as a tax, according to the majority opinion written by Justice Roberts.
“The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause,” Roberts wrote. “That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage it. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”
“They’ve reaffirmed a fund principle, that here in America, the wealthiest nation on Earth, no illness or accident should lead to any family’s financial ruin,” Obama said.
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