Post by PssttCmere on Jun 27, 2015 14:10:46 GMT -8
Scalia Calls Obamacare Ruling ‘Pure Applesauce’
By Jim Owen on 2015-06-26
Obamacare should be called “SCOTUS-care” because of the Supreme Court’s role in confirming the law, according to Justice Antonin Scalia.
He made the comment in the dissenting opinion he wrote after the court voted 6-3 to uphold a key element of the Affordable Care Act. The majority declared that residents of states where health-care exchanges have not been established can receive insurance subsidies through the federal system.
“Today’s interpretation is not merely unnatural; it is unheard of,” Scalia wrote in the minority opinion, which Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito also signed. “You would think the answer would be obvious, so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it.”
Fox News reported that Scalia dismissed the ruling as “pure applesauce” and “interpretive jiggery-pokery.” He claimed that it featured “somersaults of statutory interpretation” and showed that “words no longer have meaning.”
“The court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men. That means we are governed by the terms of our laws, not by the unenacted will of our lawmakers,” Scalia wrote.
At issue was the phrase in the law that the federal government may provide an insurance subsidy through an “exchange established by the state.” Obamacare opponents argued that residents of the 34 states that have refused to set up exchanges do not qualify.
By Jim Owen on 2015-06-26
Obamacare should be called “SCOTUS-care” because of the Supreme Court’s role in confirming the law, according to Justice Antonin Scalia.
He made the comment in the dissenting opinion he wrote after the court voted 6-3 to uphold a key element of the Affordable Care Act. The majority declared that residents of states where health-care exchanges have not been established can receive insurance subsidies through the federal system.
“Today’s interpretation is not merely unnatural; it is unheard of,” Scalia wrote in the minority opinion, which Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito also signed. “You would think the answer would be obvious, so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it.”
Fox News reported that Scalia dismissed the ruling as “pure applesauce” and “interpretive jiggery-pokery.” He claimed that it featured “somersaults of statutory interpretation” and showed that “words no longer have meaning.”
“The court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men. That means we are governed by the terms of our laws, not by the unenacted will of our lawmakers,” Scalia wrote.
At issue was the phrase in the law that the federal government may provide an insurance subsidy through an “exchange established by the state.” Obamacare opponents argued that residents of the 34 states that have refused to set up exchanges do not qualify.