New ObamaCare challenge filed with SCOTUS
Billions of program dollars unaccounted for …but taxpayers hit with “shared responsibility payments”
We recently reported that Obamacare Co-Ops have been dropping like dead, rotting flies.
Now, in the wake of the continued failures of program implementation, a new challenge has been filed with the Supreme Court:
Foes of President Obama’s health care law are taking another crack at upending the legislation, filing a new challenge with the Supreme Court after a separate long-shot case was rejected earlier this year.
The petition filed Monday by the Pacific Legal Foundation, like the prior challenge, focuses on an obscure aspect of the law. The case contends ObamaCare violates the provision of the Constitution that requires tax-raising bills to originate in the House of Representatives.
Pacific Legal Foundation lawyer Timothy Sandefur, alleging the law is “unconstitutional in so many ways,” said justices will face one challenge to the law after another until it is significantly changed or repealed.
The new appeal, filed on behalf of small-business owner Matt Sissel, stems from the Constitution’s Origination Clause, which requires that the House be the first to pass a bill “for raising revenue.”
This lawsuit is particularly timely, as new analysis shows that billions in Obamacare funds have gone missing:
The federal government awarded over $5 billion to help states set up ObamaCare exchanges, with the vast majority – $4.6 billion – going to 16 states and Washington, D.C.
But, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, much of that money has not been accounted for – and yet not returned, either.
…The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) required the establishment of health insurance exchanges – known as marketplaces – to help small employers and consumers compare and purchase insurance plans. States opted to either develop their own state-based exchanges or hand authority to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). And between 2010 and 2014, CMS awarded federal grants mostly to states setting up their own marketplaces, to help them get started.
About $4.6 billion was given to these 17 recipients, including California, New York, Washington state and Kentucky.
But the GAO report found that so far, just $1.4 billion of that has been spent on IT projects, and a total of $3 billion has been “spent or drawn down,” though not all the spending is detailed.
That, then, leaves at least $1.6 billion unaccounted for. Yet only three states returned any portion of the money – a total of just over $1 million was given back.
The potential corruption that may have essentially led to the diversion of such a vast sum of taxpayer dollars is worthy of SCOTUS-level scrutiny.
Of course, taxpayers are forced to endure another fiscal responsibility standard entirely. The IRS has been issuing “shared responsibility payment” letters for citizens who have not procured the requisite health insurance:
Thanks Obama for the fine for not having insurance
Because the the plan I had that was 398.00 a month for my family only increased to 1400.00 a month in 2014
So I chose not to pay 1400.00 a month
So got a nice little fine
Thanks for the affordable care act.
Thanks for making it so affordable!!
And what are those of us who have paid getting for their money? Perhaps less healthcare than originally advertised!
Conservative dynamo Tammy Bruce reviewed the recent American Cancer Society revisions (ACS) to mammogram recommendations, which reduce the mammograms to once every 2 years for women over 55 and eliminate the entirely when there is less than 10 years life expectancy (i.e., 60-65 years of age).
I spoke with various individuals involved in both the medical and insurance fields, and all agreed that the government task force and the ACS guidelines will be looked to by insurance companies determining what to cover, and what not to cover; it is essentially the permission slip for health insurance companies to stop paying for annual mammograms.
But it doesn’t stop there. For some reason, the ACS also “advises against clinical breast exams in which doctors physically check a woman’s breasts for lumps,” reports Fox. This micro-managing of something only a woman and her doctor should decide simply allows the insurance company to refuse payment for that as well.
If there is a bright side to the saga, it is that Obama was at least truthful when he said that his program would reduce costs…to the federal government and the insurance companies that partnered in promoting this monstrosity.
Here’s to hoping that the next time the justices see the overwhelming evidence that Obamacare is unconstitutional, they swat it like a fly!
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Comments
One more hit on the Working Poor who made too much money to get subsidies but could not afford $1400 a month for insurance.
Obama is taking their tax refund. They will never get another tax refund as long as ObamaCare is in effect.
Should try to keep more with every paycheck so that you are not due a refund.
It depends on what you class as “the working poor.” For a single, you can still earn up to $47,080 and get a subsidy. A married couple earning up to $63,720 a year, or a family of three earning up to $80,360 a year, or a family of four earning up to $97,000 a year, still get subsidies. 85% of Americans buying Obamacare plans on the exchange qualify for subsidies.
Depending on costs of living where you live, people/families on these incomes may not be seen as “the working poor.”
The real problem is that with so many receiving subsidies (i.e. Other Peoples’ Money), that sort of hides the true bottom-line cost of insurance. The 85% who are receiving subsidies don’t realize how much insurance premiums have really gone up, and how much those of us just outside the “subsidization band” are getting socked. The people just over the line, who would never have seen themselves as “poor” (not even “working poor”), but are far from rich, are the ones really suffering.
The funny thing is that this lawsuit is the result of John Roberts spontaneously declaring that the Obamacare penalty was a tax, not a penalty.
Well, if it’s a tax, the whole bill was illegally passed!
Wonder what tortured excuse the sycophant Roberts will come up with to save Obamacare this time.
Not to worry.
This court (and most for the last century) have successfully ignored the 9th Amendment.
You are lying. Roberts did not spontaneously declare anything. The government briefed this argument, and Roberts’s analysis shows clearly that it is correct.
And this challenge is frivolous and will go nowhere. The bill originated in the House and that is all the constitution requires. Amending a bill by replacing all of its words is a standard and long-standing parliamentary practise, not just in the US Congress but also in most if not all other legislatures, both in the USA and in other countries. It also probably predates the constitution.
Change that to “you are mistaken” or begone.
I will not change it. I don’t believe wcvarones was mistaken, I believe s/he was lying. There is simply no way for anyone who was following the case to remain ignorant of the government’s argument that the payment is a tax. Every blog, including this one, made much of the fact that in order to get it passed 0bama had repeatedly stated that it wasn’t a tax, and yet here was his lawyer arguing that it was. Wcvarones could not have missed that.
What a profoundly arrogant response! You claim to know the state of knowledge of a person whom you most likely don’t know. This makes me wonder how many other things you say you know which you actually don’t?
KEEP Obamacare’s extortionary “Shared Responsibility Payment” front and center this election cycle and Democrats WILL lose.
Don’t get distracted by anything else. There is no talking around a nasty fine that proves to independent voters that Democrats lied about the Affordable Care act.
That particular appeal won’t fly. It’s been routine for decades, if not longer, for the Senate to take a House tax bill, strip it down to its title, and substitute the language it wants. As long as the bill as the original HR number and title it’s “House originated” even if it’s a sham.
No court in the country will honor their argument. Go back and try again.
Get the stake, or silver bullet, or whatever is needed to kill Obamacrap once and for all ~
I think this is just another feeble attempt to stop Obamacare.
John Roberts has shown his true colors and will do anything to insure that Obamacare survives.
Very soon the President will have a rose garden press conference and rename Obamacare, SCOTUScare in honor of Roberts!
Lies and deceit were used to pass this nightmare!! And the democrat party owns this!
I hope no one is holding their breath.
If you want to make a difference this election, tell your independent voter friends that the reason…
Democrats posture so much about Greedy Bankers and Wall st. is to distract voters from the plunder committed against the middle class by their army of Greedy Tax agents.
And here’s proof.
“Here’s to hoping that the next time the justices see the overwhelming evidence that Obamacare is unconstitutional, they swat it like a fly!”
Thanks to John Roberts, you can hope in one hand and you-know-what in the other and see which one fills up first.
Ah, but recent SCOTUS rulings have shown that the so-called plain black letter reading of the law means little, often even less than that.
The only determinate of the meaning of any law is how SCOTUS rules on said law and that is totally dependent on the political makeup of the SCOTUS majority ruling on said law!
All power to some people, none to others.
The previous challenge based on states being denied funds if they didn’t set up exchanges proves the SCOTUS believes constitution is something to wipe their behinds with.
There is no constitution. The US is a dead tree that will fall as it rots from the inside as we are no longer a nation of laws (immigration laws apparently have no meaning either)
A third Dem term in the whitehouse and another liberal in the SCOTUS and the process of decay will be expedited like you never believed possible.
It’s too early to read this. Off for a second cup of coffee…
lol, I did the exact same thing.
This lawsuit not only will fail, it must fail, and must fail dramatically.
Quoting from the article: “In a statement posted Monday, the foundation claimed the Affordable Care Act as America knows it essentially was created by the Senate — by taking an unrelated House bill, gutting it and replacing the text with ObamaCare.”
That was my recollection. In other words, the bill originated in the House… but the wording was subject to The Mother of All Amendments.
But does anyone seriously doubt it was legal? As scummy as it is, this is allowed under the rules of the House, then under Nancy Pelosi. I have a hard time believing that this is without precedent, and even if it was, so what? The point is that a money bill cannot be passed without the active participation of the House, and what is arm-twisting its own regulations if not active participation?
More to the point, the judiciary second-guessing the House’s authority to manipulate its own internal rules would be blatantly unconstitutional interference in the legislative branch, wouldn’t it? I’m not writing anything new or novel. This stuff is crystal clear. It’s an obvious abuse of process.
I absolutely doubt that this practice is Constitutional. Common practice, perhaps, but not legal. We can debate the percentage of the original House Bill text that must be retained before the bill becomes a new bill, originating in the Senate rather than the House. However, whatever that percentage is, it’s above 0%.
Nonsense. There is no mention of any such requirement in the constitution. The practise of substituting all (or all but one of) the words in a bill is long-standing and standard, not just in the USA but everywhere. It probably predates the US constitution.
If you see something, say something.
I’ve copied all your comments and forwarded them to the Dept of Justice and the IRS.
I had almost forgotten about the #Obamacare #Report #Fishy campaign early on in Obama’s tenure:
#Fishy! This whole blog is #Fishy! We may as well gift Obama with a free subscription to the LI Morning Report newsletter 🙂
And now I’ve added yours.
I imagine that we LI readers & contributors have already got our own dedicated aquarium.
#fishy #fishy #fishy
The knowledge that we are forced to support pro-choice/abortion or selective-child policy, and Planned Parenthood/cannibalism, is vomit inducing.
The understanding that simultaneously rejecting intrinsic or exceptional value of human life and sustaining a multi-trillion dollar welfare industry sponsors corruption is an open concern.
The anti-human and anti-native policies of our government, human and civil rights groups, and this administration specifically, have been revealed in sharp relief. They need to reconsider their choices.
it’s not a tax: it’s a shared responsibility payment. your suit is dismissed without leave to amend.
Mitt Romney must be having a litter of baby RINOs over this.
After all, Gruber leveraged RINOs’ RomneyCare to create ObamaCare.
How is that relevant? Romneycare is a state measure, subject to the state constitution. If PPACA were to be struck down, it would not affect Romneycare’s constitutionality at all.
Off topic: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/27/7-reasons-ted-cruz-is-running-the-best-2016-campaign/
The challenge is frivolous, and I’m surprised Sandefur is championing it. Substituting all the words in a bill is what all legislatures do, and no court is ever going to strike it down. I don’t even think courts can strike it down, since it’s the internal business of the legislative branch, in which the judicial branch can’t interfere.
As I recall, ObamaCare provides no means for the IRS to collect the penalty/tax except by taking it from any tax refund you have coming. So, it you manage your withholding properly, the IRS cannot get the penalty/tax.
Now, I do not know if the assessment can carry over so that it becomes a perpetual amount that is assessed, but even then, it still can only be collected from an overpayment.