Obamacare and the Supreme Court

[Pelado]

I haven't read this entire thread and don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but I was amazed that when Justice Kagan tossed the Solicitor General a softball, asking him if there would be limits on the commerce power if the mandate is constitutional, he whiffed. He had no intelligible response to a justice who was trying to help him respond to the plaintiffs' central argument. How can a lawyer who's risen to his position be so unprepared?

It's what happens when one is made to defend an indefensible position.

To your point, though, I was surprised that his response did not even come close to getting to the heart of the question. I assumed from Kagan's asking the question that the alleged limiting principle(s) had been well-defined in the brief, and that her softball would get him back on track. Instead, either he somehow forgot what was briefed, or the briefed argument was as poor as he presented it in oral argument.

[Paperback Writer]

I haven't read this entire thread and don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but I was amazed that when Justice Kagan tossed the Solicitor General a softball, asking him if there would be limits on the commerce power if the mandate is constitutional, he whiffed. He had no intelligible response to a justice who was trying to help him respond to the plaintiffs' central argument. How can a lawyer who's risen to his position be so unprepared?

That reminds me a quote from Body Heat (1981):
Peter (Ted Danson): I think I've underestimated you, Ned. I don't know why it took me so long. You've started using your incompetence as a weapon.
Ned (William Hurt): My defense was evolving. You guys got scared

[ERCougar]

I agree with your position - Obamacare prohibits true catastrophic coverage because every policy will have minimum coverage requirements (like birth control, maternity coverage, etc.). There could still be relative catastrophic coverage that would cover very little beyond those required items until a large deductible is met.

Do you guys have a link on this? I don't see anything on obstetrics or maternity stuff on the wikipedia site.

Also, the penalty is $695 or 2.5% of income, whichever is greater. I don't think people will game this as much as conservatives are claiming. Once you hit 100K in income, you're getting close to where it's cheaper to pay for insurance, plus you have preventive services covered.

[Indy Coug]

Do you guys have a link on this? I don't see anything on obstetrics or maternity stuff on the wikipedia site.

Also, the penalty is $695 or 2.5% of income, whichever is greater. I don't think people will game this as much as conservatives are claiming. Once you hit 100K in income, you're getting close to where it's cheaper to pay for insurance, plus you have preventive services covered.

At $100K of income, individual insurance is probably closer to 10% of gross income than 2.5%.

[ERCougar]

At $100K of income, individual insurance is probably closer to 10% of gross income than 2.5%.

I said this earlier, but my premium is $230/month, family of five. $2760/year.

EDIT: I'm not saying it's adequate--I think it should be higher. But every conservative pundit I've heard only quotes the $695 number, which is only going to apply to a minority of families.

[Pelado]

Do you guys have a link on this? I don't see anything on obstetrics or maternity stuff on the wikipedia site.

Also, the penalty is $695 or 2.5% of income, whichever is greater. I don't think people will game this as much as conservatives are claiming. Once you hit 100K in income, you're getting close to where it's cheaper to pay for insurance, plus you have preventive services covered.

From yesterday's oral arguments (Solicitor General Verrilli is arguing in favor of Obamacare):

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, but it's critical how you define the market. If I understand the law, the policies that you're requiring people to purchase involve -- must contain provision for maternity and newborn care, pediatric services, and substance use treatment. It seems to me that you cannot say that everybody is going to need substance use treatment -substance use treatment or pediatric services, and yet that is part of what you require them to purchase.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, it's part of what the statute requires the insurers to offer. And I think the reason is because it's trying to define minimum essential coverage because the problem -

CHIEFJUSTICE ROBERTS: But your theory is that there is a market in which everyone participates because everybody might need a certain range of health care services, and yet you're requiring people who are not -- never going to need pediatric or maternity services to participate in that market.

GENERAL VERRILLI: The -- with respect to what insurance has to cover, Your Honor, I think Congress is entitled the latitude of making the judgments of what the appropriate scope of coverage is. And the problem here in this market is that for -- you may think you're perfectly healthy and you may think that you're not -- that you're being forced to subsidize somebody else, but this is not a market in which you can say that there is a immutable class of healthy people who are being forced to subsidize the unhealthy. This is a market in which you may be healthy one day and you may be a very unhealthy participant in that market the next day, and that is a fundamental difference, and you're not going to know in which -

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I think you're posing the question I was posing, which is that doesn't apply to a lot of what you're requiring people to purchase. Pediatric services, maternity services. You cannot say that everybody is going to participate in the substance use treatment market and yet you require people to purchase insurance coverage for that.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Congress has got --Congress is enacting economic regulation here. It has latitude to define essential -- the attributes of essential coverage. That doesn't -- that doesn't seem to me to implicate the question of whether Congress is engaging in economic regulation and solving an economic problem here, and that is what Congress is doing.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/11-398-Tuesday.pdf

[LA Ute]

It's what happens when one is made to defend an indefensible position.

To your point, though, I was surprised that his response did not even come close to getting to the heart of the question. I assumed from Kagan's asking the question that the alleged limiting principle(s) had been well-defined in the brief, and that her softball would get him back on track. Instead, either he somehow forgot what was briefed, or the briefed argument was as poor as he presented it in oral argument.

True, but even an indefensible position has an argument that can be made for it. He said nothing. I suspect he was under instructions not to suggest any limits (for political reasons) and thus tried to obfuscate his way through his response. (I know, I am probably giving him too much credit, but...the guy is an experienced appellate lawyer. To give no answer at all is just too odd to write off to incompetence.)

[Paperback Writer]

Do you guys have a link on this? I don't see anything on obstetrics or maternity stuff on the wikipedia site.

Also, the penalty is $695 or 2.5% of income, whichever is greater. I don't think people will game this as much as conservatives are claiming. Once you hit 100K in income, you're getting close to where it's cheaper to pay for insurance, plus you have preventive services covered.

I don't follow. $27,800 *.025 = $695. $100,000 * .025 = $2,500. My insurance preimums working for a Fortune 50 company are greater than $2,500 and that doesn't include the portion that is paid by the company.

As for the banning of catastrophic coverage for people > 30; I just got that by reading the SC transcript which I've already pasted here. That was stated one of the lawyers - I suppose it could have not been accurate but I doubt it.

[mtnbiker]

I said this earlier, but my premium is $230/month, family of five. $2760/year.

EDIT: I'm not saying it's adequate--I think it should be higher. But every conservative pundit I've heard only quotes the $695 number, which is only going to apply to a minority of families.

What insurance do you have? My company insurance booklet shows that I would pay $2300 this year, and the company kicks in $11,500. That's with deductibles at $2000/person, $4000/family, and insurance pays 80% after deductible is met.

[ERCougar]

What insurance do you have? My company insurance booklet shows that I would pay $2300 this year, and the company kicks in $11,500. That's with deductibles at $2000/person, $4000/family, and insurance pays 80% after deductible is met.

Humana.
It's truly catastrophic coverage though--11k family deductible, insurance pays 100% after that. All preventive services covered.

Two years ago, we were on some Select Med plan and it was around $270/month.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

At $100K of income, individual insurance is probably closer to 10% of gross income than 2.5%.

I'm like ER on this, I have crappy individual health insurance and it costs me $150 -- four people. With that said, I actually have two policies, one that covers me and one of my kids and another one that covers my wife and my other kid. It evolved that way because my wife became pregnant at the exact time I left my old job and started up my own thing. She couldn't qualify for individual coverage. We just took a risk and luckily she had an uneventful delivery.

But two policies are actually cheaper because I have double the deductible. What are the chances that something catastrophic will happen to two different people in my family?

[falafel]

I said this earlier, but my premium is $230/month, family of five. $2760/year.

EDIT: I'm not saying it's adequate--I think it should be higher. But every conservative pundit I've heard only quotes the $695 number, which is only going to apply to a minority of families.

How can I get on that plan? I pay almost $750 a month for just my family (work covers my own premiums). I'm sure it would be closer to $800 or $900 if I were paying for myself.

[Pelado]

True, but even an indefensible position has an argument that can be made for it. He said nothing. I suspect he was under instructions not to suggest any limits (for political reasons) and thus tried to obfuscate his way through his response. (I know, I am probably giving him too much credit, but...the guy is an experienced appellate lawyer. To give no answer at all is just too odd to write off to incompetence.)

I'll give him credit for attempting an argument (though maybe not the first time he was asked), but the argument he put forth never reached the stage of defining a truly limiting principle on which the Court could rely. He was asked about it repeatedly simply because he had no good argument, not for lack of an argument.

[ERCougar]

Everyone--I'm guessing your premiums are all higher because your deductibles are lower, i.e. you're no longer paying for health insurance, you're prepaying for healthcare. We pay 100% of all healthcare costs, which is not as bad as it sounds because we usually get a discount for paying cash (~20%) and it comes out of a pretax HSA (another 35%).

[Donuthole]

How can I get on that plan? I pay almost $750 a month for just my family (work covers my own premiums). I'm sure it would be closer to $800 or $900 if I were paying for myself.

FYI, your $750 covers maternity. If you don't want maternity, you can get a plan for your family with the same provider and practically all the same benefits for about $400/mo.