6/18/21 "Curses! Foiled Again!" Says GOP, as SCOTUS Upholds Obamacare for the Third Time

The enemies of the Affordable Care Act -- that legislation that provides access to health insurance to all U.S. citizens and legal resident -- have once again lost a legal battle in the Supreme Court. This time, the Court dismissed the carefully groomed case because the plaintiffs had no skin in the game.

"We conclude that the plaintiffs in this suit failed to show a concrete, particularized injury fairly traceable to the defendants' conduct in enforcing the specific statutory provision they attack as unconstitutional," wrote Stephen Breyer in his opinion for the majority. "They have failed to show that they have standing to attack as unconstitutional the Act's minimum essential coverage provision." Justices Alito and Gorsuch dissented.

So now, presumably, the GOP's misanthropes in the various states that brought the lawsuit are “standing” around with cocktails saying, "Standing? We don't have standing?! As if the very nation is not harmed by Obamacare. Why, the very principles on which this nation stands...!" Or maybe they're more interesting in real life.

In any case, they'll have to be pretty creative to come up with another SCOTUS-worthy argument. The first lawsuit brought by the anti-ACA crowd was a bid to have the "individual coverage mandate" declared unconstitutional. That mandate levied a tax penalty on any American who didn't buy health insurance. The Supreme Court let the mandate stand.

Then the GOP-led Senate slashed the actual tax penalty to 0%, and a second lawsuit went up the legal ladder, arguing that if there was no tax, there was no legal reason for the mandate. This time the Supreme Court agreed that the mandate was unconstitutional, but said that the lack of the mandate was no reason to strike down the whole dang law.

Obamacare lived to fight another day. That fight, of course, led to the decision released Thursday.

Now, with three opinions from SCOTUS, the law that 31 million Americans rely on for their health insurance is looking pretty solid. Let's hope it stays that way!

Do you think that Obamacare is just as good as Medicare for All? Should the subsidies be higher? Should the insurance be free?

Can you think of any other way that right-wing thinkers could fight the law? Do you think the conservatives on the Court are surprising the conservatives who appointed them?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/17/politics/supreme-court-affordable-care-act-obamacare/index.html?fbclid=IwAR06jqnjvYf-HD7AKZKazoErNMaKokyeAl3bOYx6ARvg99GVz_AF5bxPZ4s