Second Great Victory of Obama in the U. S. Supreme Court in less than a week. People in INTRADE.COM were betting 75% that it was going to be overturned and lost their money. The first Great Obama Victory was the emasculation or castration of SB 1070.
POLITICO.COM
Health care ruling: Individual mandate upheld by Supreme Court
By JENNIFER HABERKORN
June 28, 2012
Health care ruling: Individual mandate upheld by Supreme Court
Some excerpts :
Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court’s four liberal justices in the ruling, which says Congress had the authority to impose the law’s individual mandate under Congress’s taxing power.
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Still, the rest of the ruling is a surprise victory for the Obama administration, which faced a tough grilling from the court — including from Roberts — during the oral arguments in March. It guarantees that most of the two-year-old law will stay in place, avoiding the massive disruption to the health care industry that would have resulted if the mandate had been struck down.
"Simply put, Congress may tax and spend," Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. "This grant gives the federal government considerable influence even in areas where it cannot directly regulate."
"The federal government may enact a tax on an activity that it cannot authorize, forbid or otherwise control,” Roberts wrote.
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In the ruling, Roberts wrote that the court rejected the idea that the mandate regulates people under existing commercial activity. But the court ruled that Congress can impose mandate under the taxing power.
"It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce,” Roberts wrote.
"The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a 'fairly possible' one,” Roberts wrote. "The government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the constitution. Granting the act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read."
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But Thursday’s ruling now settles the big constitutional question once and for all: Congress can require people to have health coverage.
The court’s decision allows the law’s more popular provisions to survive, like guaranteed coverage for people with pre-existing conditions starting in 2014 — the same year the mandate is scheduled to take effect.
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