So, today’s the big day. Conventional wisdom has it that SCOTUS will either strike down the Affordable Healthcare Act, or at least the individual mandate. If the mandate goes, that ought to piss off insurance companies, who will still have to cover all those undesirables out there. So I guess that means higher insurance premiums for everybody that actually buys insurance. If they strike the act down entirely, well, things should stay more or less the same for me, but turn to shit for a lot of other people. Of course, the Medicare for All people say they’ll push for that (good luck with that – I just don’t see it happening with all the money involved, and particularly in light of Citizens United, but I would be happy to be wrong). But maybe Fat Tony was so pissed off the other day because he was on the losing side of the AZ immigration law, and he knew he was gonna lose on Obamacare, too. We shall see.
The other dog and pony show on tap today is the contempt vote on Eric Holder, which I assume is a done deal. It’s all a travesty, of course, though it carries no actual legal weight that I’m aware of, and I’m not sure how many people will actually care. I suppose they can try and make negative ads or something – but they’d have done that anyway.
Darrel Issa now says he doesn’t think Holder (let alone Obama) knew of any guns walking. But it’s not about that. It’s about the documents. That’s the typical Republican MO. Throw some bogus allegation or conspiracy theory out there and get lots of headlines. Then quietly admit it was all bullshit, and find some unrelated bullshit to try and make a case out of.
Well, nothing wrong with this land deal, but he got a blowjob in the Oval Office, so we have to impeach him.
Oh well, time to get ready to get ready.
Cenk on “Young Turks” did an excellent job covering
the Fortune magazine article about ‘Fast and Furious’.
It never happened the way the rethugs are framing it, the whistle-blower
was full of shit but……., Holder doesn’t want to start a fight with the
NRA so caves in to a lie.
The Flagstaff fire in Boulder us pretty much over
and everything will be fine until the next lightening
strike.
No matter how dramatic it might look on television
the fire in Colorado Springs is worse. The swirling winds
and unpredictable weather near the Springs are characteristic
of that area.
Yesterday there was a story about a guy who had gone through
Katrina, lost his son in Iraq and now might have lost his home .
My heart went out to him and the thousands now homeless.
Had a bitter laugh when I saw that the chairman of Exxon
said we’d be able to ‘adapt’ to global warming. :fu:
How sad is that?
According to SCOTUS blog:
From the section on the mandate:
( :dancers: )
I guess……(?)
Just the fact that it’ll piss off Rush Limbaugh and all of Fux News is reason to celebrate. And it’ll be fun to hear them all call Roberts a traitor.
I don’t think there’s any sanction or enforcement mechanism for not paying
the penalty
Seder said that was explicitly written out of the law.
I don’t know. Seems as though if SCOTUS is calling it a tax, then the IRS can enforce it. But who knows? Not CNN, that’s for sure.
I just heard a pretty smart sounding legal guy saying that tax penalty was still in tact and there were means of enforcement. It’s going to take a while to figure out this one. Then maybe they can get on with the work on improvement.
It’s nice that the US will join all the other industrialized nations in providing healthcare for its people (most of them anyway) but I still don’t know what the Medicaid decision means.
The Dems had better make clear what this decision means. The Repubs are already saying that people will now be taken off their private healthcare and forced to pay $2000 more a year. Of course the right has no compunctions about lying but the Dems need to not remain silent.
The ACA said that if states didn’t expand Medicaid as outlined in the Act, then the feds could withhold Medicaid funding. The ruling says that the feds can withhold any expanded funding to states that don’t comply, but they can’t withhold the original funding.
I don’t like the sound of this, though:
But then there’s Tom:
Mrs Art has been kind of involved in a Medicaid expansion
program. There was money for temporaries to make
people aware but that has now ended so county workers
who were already overworked will now have an additional
700 cases to handle with no additional people to help process.
Well, I think the price of stock in insurance companies should start to go up pretty steeply.
I’m sure that didn’t influence Roberts at all.
NPR was going on about what a modest reasonable
guy he is :barf:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
O’Donnell has had some of the best pundificating about health care reform, often contrary to the Dem party line after they settled (caved in) for a product that often reflected repug ideas and proposals like the ‘mandate’. Lawrence was always quick to point out that this reform did not accomplish universal health care and millions are still not included (I wonder who those people might be?) in the so-called “greatest health care system” in the world (if you have the money). I do not mean to downplay the good this health-care law has already done and will do but there is a lot more needed.
How long before the right wing, repug, phony libertarians and tea party types embrace their John Birch Society heritage and start printing their ‘Impeach John Roberts’ bumper stickers and erecting the billboards?
Just don’t be caught living poor in a Red state
with poor health
Tim Bishop, my congressman For Shelter Island just published this:
· The Affordable Care Act gradually closes the “donut hole†or coverage gap for prescription drugs in Medicare Part D, and will completely eliminate the gap by 2020. Since the law was enacted, New York residents with Medicare Part D coverage have saved a total of $269,451,402 on their prescription drugs.
· In the first five months of 2012, 50,447 people with Medicare Part D coverage received a 50 percent discount on their covered brand-name prescription drugs when they hit the donut hole. This discount has resulted in an average savings of $655 per person, and a total savings of $33,040,539 in New York.
· In 2011, 2,012,136 people with Medicare in New York received free preventive services, including mammograms and colonoscopies, or a free annual wellness visit with their doctor. In the first five months of 2012, 888,703 people with Medicare received free preventive services.
Americans with Private Insurance:
· Because of the Affordable Care Act, 3,342,000 in New Yorkers with private health insurance gained preventive service coverage with no cost-sharing. In August, New York women will begin receiving free coverage for a package of comprehensive women’s preventive services.
· The Affordable Care Act generally requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of consumers’ premium dollars on medical care and quality improvement, and can only spend the remaining 20 percent on administrative costs, such as salaries and marketing. 1,001,476 New Yorkers will benefit from $86,526,642 in rebates, an average of $138 per family, from insurance companies as a result of the law.
· The law bans lifetime benefit dollar limits imposed by insurance companies. Already, 6,432,000 residents, including 2,529,000 women and 1,609,000 children, with chronic conditions are free from worrying that their illness will bankrupt them. The law also restricts the use of annual coverage limits and bans them completely in 2014.
Young Adults:
· 160,000 New Yorkers under age 26 have taken advantage of the Affordable Care Act’s provision allowing them to obtain health insurance through their parents’ plan.
Patients with Pre-Existing Conditions:
· As of April 2012, 3,320 previously uninsured residents of New York who were locked out of the coverage system because of a pre-existing condition are now insured through a new Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan that was created under the new health reform law.
· As of March 23, 2010, under the law, plans that cover children can no longer exclude, limit, or deny coverage to children under age 19 solely based on a health problem or disability that a child developed before seeking coverage. These protections will be extended to Americans of all ages starting in 2014.
Jun 28, 2012
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Following today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, Sen. Rand Paul offered the following statement:
“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional. While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right,” Sen. Paul said.
“Obamacare is wrong for Americans. It will destroy our health care system. This now means we fight every hour, every day until November to elect a new President and a new Senate to repeal Obamacare,” he continued.
Ah, Merkin Head. I am so thankful that the son of Ron will carry on proud and insidious John Birch Society legacy.
Dylan’s Moonshine is great song.
Sad to hear the news that Guy Clark’s wife Susanna is meeting up with Townes Van Zandt somewhere.
🙁 :gate:
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on Thursday accused Chief Justice John Roberts and the four other justices who upheld President Barack Obama’s health care reform law of being part of an “activist†Supreme Court.
“It really is a turning point in American history,†Bachmann told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We will never be the same again. … For my mind, this is clearly unconstitutional. There is no basis in the Constitution for the government to have this level of history-making expansion of power.”
(Bold is mine.)
Pretty historic day, eh? Glad the insurance companies will have some regulation placed on their amoral practices.
How far the four dissenters were willing to go
By Steve Benen
–
Thu Jun 28, 2012 11:41 AM EDT
In a 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. But as the political, legal, and policy world scrutinizes the details of today’s ruling, it’s worth pausing to appreciate just how far the four dissenters — who filed their dissent jointly — were willing to go.
The conventional wisdom, which was neither conventional nor wise, was that the individual mandate was in deep trouble, but it was unrealistic to think the justices would be so radical as to kill every letter of every word of every page of the law. Such a breathtaking move would simply be unnecessarily radical.
And yet, as of this morning, four justices — Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas — insisted on doing exactly that. The four dissenters demanded that the Supreme Court effectively throw out the entirety of the law — the mandate, the consumer protections, the tax cuts, the subsidies, the benefits, everything.
To reach this conclusion, these four not only had to reject a century of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, they also had ignore the Necessary and Proper clause, and Congress’ taxation power. I can’t read Chief Justice John Roberts’ mind, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the extremism of the four dissenters effectively forced him to break ranks — had Kennedy been willing to strike down the mandate while leaving the rest of the law intact, this may well have been a 5-4 ruling the other way.
Roberts’ motivations notwithstanding, it’s important that Americans understand that there are now four justices on the Supreme Court who effectively want to overturn the 20th century. Based on the flimsiest of arguments, the four dissenters want to kill progressive legislation basically because their political ideologies tell them to do so.
There are some who argue that this year’s presidential election isn’t especially important. I hope those who believe this consider what today’s court minority was prepared to do, and what they will do with just one more vote. Maddow Blog
Katie and Tom are calling it quits.
got fired today
I hope that gets you unemployment insurance.
Travis- really sorry you lost your job. Hell of a way to begin a “holiday” week. On the bright side, you won’t have to ask for the day off.
There’s better jobs out there. I really didn’t like being called a “dish-bitch” anyway.
I’ve been unable to get to the MS blog directly since last week and my adventures with “free” wifi where we stayed on vacation. Yesterday, my cat Clifford, fixed it. Walking on my keyboard with all 4 feet he managed to hide all my tool bars and make it impossible for me to close a site. But, 45 minutes of me, dork, trying to fix it finally worked and so does the link to the MS blog.
Clifford’s methods may be unorthodox but at least they work.
The paws that refreshes
Ever think that the “Uhmurcun peepull” people like Boehner and the rest of the repugs love to invoke against just about anything gubment except for guns and military are they guys they stand next to at the urinal while taking a leak? Nice polling samples.
Is OK to Spoof the Dead? Comedy Writer Jim Earl’s Book Mourning Remembrance Tries It
:sammy: :fire:
Here’s his latest, posted on his website
http://www.jimearl.com/blog.html
:rofl2:
Eugene Polley, inventor of the wireless television remote control, is no longer in control of anything.
Polley died in Downers Grove, Ill of natural causes, if such a thing was ever possible in Downers Grove.
Small and frail, the elderly Polley alarmed family members late Tuesday night after getting lost in the couch. Medical examiners were quick to note dog-chew marks on Polley’s torso and a sticky film of humus or something all over his face.
Invented in 1955, Polley’s Flash-Matic remote worked like a flashlight and was shaped like a snub-nosed revolver, something many Americans would later shove in their mouths after watching eight hours of shitty westerns.
Sadly, the 96 year-old died before he had a chance to finish his most important invention: a remote control for his diaper.
Polley’s family expect him to be buried sometime next week. That is, if anybody can get off their fat ass and stop watching TV long enough to do something.
Polley requested four photoelectric cells be implanted in his scrotum so when Jesus returns to earth, the light from his vengeful sword will activate the small electric motor at the base of his penis and change his tombstone to the Dumont network
PJ, where are you?
I think PJ’s taken the week off.
Farewell, Sheriff.
🙁 :gate:
One of my favorite movies is No Time For Sergeants. I really like Andy Griffith.
🙁 :gate: