If ACA mandates are upheld, we won't get Medicare-for-All and better health care for a generation.

[kenny blankenship]

72. Wow do you make shit up all the time?

They are not asking the Supreme Court to find the ACA unConstitutional. That is completely false.

From the Brief Itself:

1. This brief does not address the
constitutionality of ACA’s minimum individual
insurance coverage provision, 26 U.S.C. § 5000A
(Suppl. IV 2011). Nor does this brief address the
Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2283 (1948), or
Medicaid questions pending before this Court.

AHIP (America's Health Insurance Plans) and BCBS are taking NO ISSUE with the Constitutionality of the mandate. Indeed why should they? They were the ones who insisted on it. They explicitly declined to add to any negative arguments that the Court heard on that issue from the States Attys General. They are also not taking issue with the Medicaid expansion, and they likewise have nothing to say about whether the individual mandate is a tax or a fine, which was a source of confusion and embarrassment for the Obama Administration in Court and which may weigh against ACA with the other considerations as the SCOTUS decides whether the law can stand.

The brief asks the court to treat the issue of the mandate as inseparable from certain key provisions of the ACA, such as the requirement to issue policies to all, and the prohibition on denying coverage for preexisting conditions. The Supreme Court is being asked therefore to overrule the 11th Circuit Court which allowed that these were separable, but they are not being asked to strike the whole thing down. Since an Obama administration lawyer, Edwin Kneedler, told the Supreme Court that should the individual mandate be struck down, two of its key provisions would also have to be cut out, (the provision covering pre-existing conditions and the one affecting those patients with a past medical history), that puts the Administration in substantial agreement with the AHIP brief. They are not in perfect agreement about which provisions would have to go, but they are in perfect agreement that some would have to go, and they most certainly are NOT on opposing sides as to the Constitutionality of the act as a whole or the mandate in particular.

AHIP and BCBS argue some ACA provisions are only practical with the individual mandate in place as a precondition. That puts them in agreement on that point with almost every supporter of the ACA on this website, as well as the Obama Adminstration.