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Local reaction to Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare
“The Supreme Court’s decision today does not change the basic truth: Obamacare is a bad law, sold deceptively, and it is fundamentally broken. Americans deserve health care policy that makes it easier for companies to provide insurance and for individuals to buy it themselves, not harder. I hear stories all the time about how Obamacare is hurting people in Ohio.”
— U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana
“The Supreme Court reaffirmed what the health law is all about: helping hardworking families purchase affordable health insurance. The health law helps Ohio families with incomes between $23,850 and $95,400 – who do not have access to affordable coverage through an employer and are not eligible for programs like Medicaid or Medicare – access preventive health care instead of costly emergency room visit. When more Ohioans have health insurance, everyone enjoys a more competitive marketplace, more choice, and lower prices.”
— U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio
“ObamaCare is fundamentally broken, increasing health care costs for millions of Americans. Today’s ruling doesn’t change that fact. Republicans will continue to listen to American families and work to protect them from the consequences of ObamaCare. And we will continue our efforts to repeal the law and replace it with patient-centered solutions that meet the needs of seniors, small business owners, and middle-class families.”
— House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp.
“Obamacare is broken. it is a system that does not work. It’s putting pressure on our hospitals and the entire health care system … We need to make certain that we have a health care system that’s restored and maintains quality care for our patients.”
— U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton
“It’s time for Congressman Turner and the Republicans in Congress to stop their wasteful effort to deny hard working families affordable healthcare coverage. It’s time Mike Turner gets back to work on issues Daytonians care about like funding our neglected transportation system, improving education and bringing high quality jobs to Dayton.”
— Montgomery County Democratic Party Chairman Mark Owens
Local reaction to Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare
“The Supreme Court’s decision today does not change the basic truth: Obamacare is a bad law, sold deceptively, and it is fundamentally broken. Americans deserve health care policy that makes it easier for companies to provide insurance and for individuals to buy it themselves, not harder. I hear stories all the time about how Obamacare is hurting people in Ohio.”
— U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana
“The Supreme Court reaffirmed what the health law is all about: helping hardworking families purchase affordable health insurance. The health law helps Ohio families with incomes between $23,850 and $95,400 – who do not have access to affordable coverage through an employer and are not eligible for programs like Medicaid or Medicare – access preventive health care instead of costly emergency room visit. When more Ohioans have health insurance, everyone enjoys a more competitive marketplace, more choice, and lower prices.”
— U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio
“ObamaCare is fundamentally broken, increasing health care costs for millions of Americans. Today’s ruling doesn’t change that fact. Republicans will continue to listen to American families and work to protect them from the consequences of ObamaCare. And we will continue our efforts to repeal the law and replace it with patient-centered solutions that meet the needs of seniors, small business owners, and middle-class families.”
— House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp.
“Obamacare is broken. it is a system that does not work. It’s putting pressure on our hospitals and the entire health care system … We need to make certain that we have a health care system that’s restored and maintains quality care for our patients.”
— U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton
“It’s time for Congressman Turner and the Republicans in Congress to stop their wasteful effort to deny hard working families affordable healthcare coverage. It’s time Mike Turner gets back to work on issues Daytonians care about like funding our neglected transportation system, improving education and bringing high quality jobs to Dayton.”
— Montgomery County Democratic Party Chairman Mark Owens
Key points:
- The ruling means 161,000 Ohioans will keep their federal assistance to make their policies more affordable.
- Subsidies that 8.7 million people currently receive to make insurance affordable do not depend on where they live, under the 2010 health care law.
- "Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
- Of those receiving subsidies, 6.4 million people were at risk of losing that aid because they live in states that did not set up their own health insurance exchanges.
For the second time since 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts recued the new federal health law as he concluded Congress fully intended to provide financial help to people buying insurance even in states which did not establish their own marketplaces.
In a 6-3 ruling Thursday written by Roberts, the court concluded that 161,000 people in Ohio can continue to receive federal tax credits to subsidize the cost of their insurance policies they had to buy through a federal marketplace because Ohio Republicans refused to set up a state marketplace.
With his ruling, Roberts rejected a conservative legal challenge which claimed that the 2010 law signed by President Barack Obama only permitted federal financial help to people to buy their insurance through marketplaces “established by the state.”
They contended those four words means if states such as Ohio chose not to set up a marketplace, the federal government could not provide tax credits or subsidies to people in Ohio. In addition to Ohio, 33 other states refused to establish their own markeplaces, which also are known as exchanges.
Although Roberts acknowledged the law “contains more than a few examples of in-artful drafting,” he wrote that the overall purpose of the law “leads us to conclude” that it “allows tax credits for insurance purchased on any exchange created under the act.”
“Those credits are necessary for the federal exchanges to function like their state exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid,” Roberts wrote.
In 2012, Roberts cast the deciding vote to uphold the mandate in the law – also known as Obamacare – requiring people to buy insurance policies if their employers did not provide coverage.
The ruling capped off a triumphant week for Obama. Not only did the court save his signature domestic achievement, but Congress provided him with the authority he needs to conclude a massive free-trade zone between the United States and 11 Pacific-rim nations.
Delivering a statement in the White House Rose Garden, Obama hailed the court for upholding “a critical part of this law -– the part that’s made it easier for Americans to afford health insurance regardless of where you live.”
Obama said “if the partisan challenge to this law had succeeded, millions of Americans would have had thousands of dollars’ worth of tax credits taken from them. For many, insurance would have become unaffordable again. Many would have become uninsured again. Ultimately, everyone’s premiums could have gone up.”
House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester, said that the health law is “fundamentally broken.” He pledged to “continue our efforts to repeal the law” and replace it with a more market-oriented approach. But privately a number of Republicans, fearing a voter backlash, were relieved that the court did not end subsidies to 6.4 million across the country.
Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer joined Roberts to uphold the subsidies.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, with Scalia caustically writing that the court re-wrote the law “to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” a short-handed reference to the Supreme Court.
The ruling revolved along a legal debate between dueling conservative principles held by Roberts and Scalia. Roberts tends to give the benefit of the doubt to a legislature, swerving close to the view held by the late federal appeals Judge Robert Bork that a legislature has a right to be wrong as long as it is not constitutionally wrong.
By contrast, Scalia holds the view that justices must rule on the law’s exact language as opposed to what lawmakers insist the law was meant to say.
Roberts wrote that “the power to make the law rests” with legislatures and “in every case we must respect the role of the legisla¬ture, and take care not to undo what it has done.”
He wrote that Congress approved the health law “to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret (the law) in a way that is con-sistent with the former, and avoids the latter.”
Scalia was having none of that, writing that the decision was “absurd.” He complained that “words no longer have meaning if an exchange that is not established by a state is ‘established by the state.’ ”
“Faced with overwhelming confirmation that ‘exchange established by the state’ means what it looks like it means, the court comes up with argument after feeble argument to support its contrary interpretation,” Scalia wrote.
The Obama administration insisted such an interpretation violated the whole intent of the law. They pointed to another section of the law which asserted the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “shall establish and operate” such an exchange “within the state.”
The 2010 health care law aimed to provide health coverage to 32 million of the more than 46 million Americans who in 2009 were without any insurance. The law made it easier for low-income families to qualify for Medicaid, the joint federal-state program which provides health care for 60 million low-income people.
But for families of four earning from $23,500 a year to $95,000, the law provided a second avenue to buy insurance. The federal government offered financial assistance, such as tax credits, to those families who could then buy more affordable policies online insurance marketplaces in each state, set up either by the state or federal government.
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