The individual mandate tax upheld.

Medicaid coercion law is upheld.

Justice Roberts was the deciding vote to allow the ACA to pass.


Per the decision, The court reinforces that individuals can simply refuse to pay the tax and not comply with the mandate.  Correction:   Apologies - you can't refuse to pay the tax; typo. The only effect of not complying with the mandate is that you pay the tax.


On the Medicaid issue, a majority of the Court holds that the Medicaid expansion is constitutional but that it w/b unconstitutional for the federal government to withhold Medicaid funds for non-compliance with the expansion provisions.  The key comment on salvaging the Medicaid expansion is this (from Roberts): "Nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the ACA to expand the availability of health care, and requiring that states accepting such funds comply with the conditions on their use. What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.

The Court holds that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause, but that doesn't matter b/c there are five votes for the mandate to be constitutional under the taxing power.The Court holds that the Anti-Injunction Act doesn't apply because the label "tax" is not controlling.

The dissent opinion is:

 In opening his statement in dissent, Kennedy says: "In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety.

Justice Ginsburg makes clear that the vote is 5-4 on sustaining the mandate as a form of tax. Her opinion, for herself and Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan, joins the key section of Roberts opinion on that point. She would go further and uphold the mandate under the Commerce Clause, which Roberts wouldn't. Her opinion on Commerce does not control.

Justice Ginsburg would uphold Medicaid just as Congress wrote it. That, too, is not controlling.

 The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

Amen, morningstar. Amen.

It ain't over yet. My understanding is this will go to Congress for a repeal? Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

The above will never happen.

I think I'm going to start calling Justice Roberts "Judas Roberts".

It's naive to think that Republicans like the Bushes have chosen nominees for the court who are seriously opposed to these changes.

When push comes to shove, there will be a show of opposition.  That's it.

I don't believe they will ever overturn Roe vs. Wade.

Interesting commentary from another blog;

You'd have to be on drugs to believe that the Constitution of the original 13 Protestant states of America would be upheld by a "Supreme" Court that comprises:

2 Jesuits
2 Knights of Malta
2 Papists, and
3 Jєωs.
LOL ... pass the bong!!   :smoke-pot:

I think I'm going to start calling Justice Roberts "Judas Roberts".

He and many other so called "Catholics" should be excommunicated for taking the silver but he won't like so many others.   And yet they threaten the SSPX  with excommunication.

Sister Carol Keehan should have been excommunicated a long time ago...
She is another novus ordo catholic getting paid salary and full benefits about a million dollars for her position as head of the Catholic health association.
(she broke her vows of poverty and is very liberal and anti-Catholic novus ordo.  

news.yahoo.com/catholic-health-association-pleased