11th Circuit Court of Appeals slams Individual Mandate

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True and well-documented. All American doctors get to be are glorified pill-pushers for the pharmaceutical companies.

More money in treating the symptoms than curing the disease.

I suggest that you are both incorrect, and I rely on Booker v. United States (2005) 543 U.S. 220 as authority for my position.



Nowhere in the Supreme Court's decision in Booker is there any suggestion that a statute requires a severability clause. In fact, the Court's ruling appears perfectly clear that there is a positive obligation on the Court to retain the balance of the statute unless one of the three criteria (constitutionality, independent function and consistency with Congressional intent) is lost.

From my personal experience, anti-depressants fail to even treat the symptoms. Yet I see other people with much milder depression having beneficial results so it's hard to know for sure what is going on. I know I can't stop trying to find treatment that works but I have a lot of doubts as to the competency of the science. I have a strong suspicion that there isn't a single cause nor a single cure, and that "depression" may not even a single illness.

Considering all 2000+ pages of Obamacare supposedly falls apart when the individual mandate is removed, I think that is grounds for all 2000+ pages to be thrown out.

Not according to the 2 judges of the 11th circuit who formed the majority. They found the mandate could be severed from PPACA using the metric mentioned by visagrunt above. They examined whether PPACA had merit that Congress might pursue without a mandate. In their opinion it did so the mandate was severable.

And the 6th circuit found the entire law constitutional, with the support of a conservative Bush appointee.. So obviously there are differing opinions among professionals.

Agreed.

Booker references, Regan v. Time, Inc. as its foundation.

That case shows in relevant part...


The ability for a court to rule a portion of a law unconstitutional without voiding the whole law as unconstitutional rests on what is being challenged and the purpose of the law and the issue if the issue in controversy runs to the heart of the law or just a matter in how it is operated.

In Regan, there was a prohibition against printing/copying money under counterfeiting laws. The court determined that for some time it was okay to make copies of currencies in various fashions for many harmless applications that were otherwise tolerated by the government. Hence, the issue being challenged was unconstitutional, but the overriding law was constitutional. There were other ways to carry out the mandates of the law even with the challenged provision abolished.

In Obamacare, there is no way for it to work without the mandate of every person being put into the program. Normally, a provision in the law that affirmatively says that if something is ruled unconstitutional, the remainder of the law shall stand without it is inserted. WITHOUT THIS SAFEGUARD, the general rule is that if a provision is ruled unconstitutional, the whole law fails. This is because an analysis of how pivotal the provision is to the whole of the law is necessary.

Frankly, I feel the appeals court's statement that their ruling does not invalidate the whole of the law is more political than rational. So much of Obamacare hinges on forced participation for it to work. This is not uncommon in the judicial system. Hence, it will be up to the Supreme Court to not only rule on this provision of Obamacare, but it will have to also rule on whether the law as a whole is constitutionally valid or not. Certainly, government has the ability to regulate in matters of health care and to enact reforms, but Obamacare was essentially a government take over of health care, and that, I believe, is not constitutionally supported.

But you are both presupposing the result of the argument. I don't deny that an argument for complete invalidity can be made. Almost any argument can be made--the issue is what arguments are likely to be accepted.

As Regan v. Time, Inc. sets out clearly: "the presumtpion is in favour of severability."

You may well be right that the Court can find grounds for finding against severability, but your original statement:

is manifestly false.

Well here is the thing, most pieces of legislation have written into them the severability clause, but the Democrats deliberately left it out of Obamacare, so there is no severability clause, thus the Supreme Court will be well within their rights to throw all of Obamacare out.

Which part of the Supreme Court's statement, "the presumtpion is in favour of severability," do you not understand?

The lack of a severability clause might well be a factor that a court is obliged to consider in evaluating whether the balance of the statute meets the test of, "being consistent with Congress’ basic objectives in enacting the statute," but I see nothing to suggest that it is determinative. Quite the contrary, if the absence of a severability clause was determinative, then the presumption would be in favour of non-severability. Which is clearly not the state of the law at present.

The Government has argued that the individual mandate is essential for Obamacare to work, so according to the Government it can't be severed.

All well and good. But it's not the government's opinion that matters.

The court's decision must be predicated on Congress'--not the executive's--intention.

Obama was happy to have the extension. He's going to continue the payroll tax holiday as well. The idea being that Republicans will not pass any stimulus and this is one of his only levers to get money into the economy. In December 2012, win or lose, he has a chance to veto any extension and he will no longer be accountable to voters.

Notice that even with all of the diaper wetting over spending, the 2012 budget is barely touched. Everyone is terrified of upsetting the apple cart with spending cuts or tax increases right now.

Not exactly true, the Republicans passed a Budget in the House. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has refused to even let it up for debate. Furthermore, the Senate hasn't even scheduled any time to work on their own budget.

You can argue how good or bad Paul Ryan's budget is, but at least the Republicans actually wrote a budget in the House and passed a budget. So the fact we don't have a budget (and didn't while Democrats had total control of congress), makes the issue entirely the Democrat's fault.

True, the kind of people that you support want to destroy the economy immediately for political purposes. I had forgotten that such irrational trash existed, but then you posted and I was reminded. Thanks. What I meant to say was that, "reasonable and informed people are concerned about taking money out of the economy right now, in any form".

But teahadists didn't manage to get their most apocalyptic wishes enshrined in the deficit deal, even though many teahadists voted for it in the end.

Thanks for proving beyond a reasonable doubt that you are a partisan lunatic. Because you don't agree with the fact the tea party and Republicans would actually put their foot down and try to reign in the unsustainable spending, you call them terrorists. You are more partisan than I have ever been, most I've associated Democrats with terrorists is that Obama was/is friends with terrorists. Only reason I can say that and not be a hypocrit is the fact he was/is friends with William Ayers, and Bernedine Dorn, whom are domestic terrorists (and Ayers is a unrepenentant one at that). So the statement is factually correct.

Oh and don't bother with the left and terrorism arguments that I've made in the past as hypocracy, you and I both know that I was pointing out violence that comes from the left, I never said all people on the left were terrorists, nor did I call elected officials on the other side of the aisle terrorists.

You seem to believe the internet invokes a kind of symbolic magic. That if you type things, you can change facts and reality.

Good luck with that.