In its ACA opinion today, the Court significantly narrowed its “Chevron-deference” doctrine. I’m glad. Even despite the immediate repercussions for EPA authority.
[T]oday’s victory may have been even more decisive than it looks at first glance.
It isn’t just that the Court ruled six-to-three in favor of the government’s position, with John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy joining the Court’s liberals in support of a single, non-splintered decision, though that’s important.
It’s also that Roberts’ opinion may have precluded any future efforts by a Republican president to use executive discretion to cancel the subsidies for the millions of people on the federal exchange. [Italics in original.] This option might have been left open if the ruling had been written differently.
— A decisive win for Obamacare, Greg Sargent, Washington Post, today
Indeed.
The Court issued opinions in two of its seven remaining cases this morning, in this one, King v. Burwell, is in my opinion the lesser-significant of the two. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, in which the Court, ruling 5-4, upheld as both intended by the Fair Housing Act and within permissible constitutional bounds the right to invoke that Act to challenge government agency and private business actions that, while not overtly racially discriminatory, plainly have a discriminatory effect. It is a tremendously important opinion, even beyond the housing issue. And no slouch in the significance department is another 5-4 opinion issued this week, Kingsley v. Hendrickson, that began, finally, the process of limiting what has been the tacitly unfettered authority of prison guards to brutalize both pretrial detainees and post-conviction inmates—although the dissents in that opinion deserve their own post, and soon will get one.
But the far-reaching importance of the King opinion today, authored by Roberts, is in its choice to interpret the statute directly as providing for the subsidies irrespective of whether a state had designed and runs its own insurance exchange or instead defaults to the option by which the federal government created and runs the state’s exchange. The government had argued both that that was the clear intent of the statute in providing for the default (the backup) option, and, alternatively, that under a Court-created doctrine known as “Chevron deference,” courts are required to give deference to the statutorily designated federal agency—here, HHS—in the agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous provision in the statute.
The Chevron-deference option would have enabled a later White House administration’s HHS to interpret the statutory language at issue—“an Exchange established by the State”—as the King plaintiffs claimed: Tax credits are available only in states in which the Exchange was set up and is run by the state, not an Exchange set up and run for the state by the federal government.
The Chevron-deference doctrine was created in a 1984 Supreme Court opinion, Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., mainly for the purpose of allowing Reagan’s regulatory agency chiefs to orchestrate the industry capture of the respective regulatory agency charged with regulating the capturing industry. Federal laws that create regulatory agencies provide that the agency itself will design regulations addressing specifics, in order to give effect to the broad design and mandates of the Act that establishes the agency. The EPA was the original target of the Chevron doctrine, and is still the most common, I believe, but obviously the doctrine comes in handy in undermining regulations regulating the financial industry, the pharmaceutical industry, employee safety, and, well … you get the idea.
The doctrine’s stated premise is a clearly sensible one: that the very purpose of creating a regulatory agency is to have a permanent body of experts in the relevant fields employ their expertise to study the science, the technology, the methodology, and promulgate regulatory mandates and parameters that give effect to Congress’s purpose in enacting the statute and creating the regulatory agency. But the extreme deference that the Chevron doctrine has appeared to accord to the agencies has, rather than served to effectuate congressional regulatory purposes in enacting the statutes that come within the regulatory jurisdiction of the relevant agency—the Clean Air Act vis-à-vis the EPA, for example—turned control of these agencies into political footballs.
Which was fine with the conservative justices, as long as the White House was in Republican hands. But nearly seven years into the Obama administration, they’ve had enough, and have begun to make noises indicating a change of heart on Chevron. They want to rein it in. Two of them, joined by the four Democratic justices, took the first step toward that today, in King. And tomorrow, it is widely expected, in a case called Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, the five Republican justices will take a second, broader, and direct step, in an opinion that will strike down as beyond its authority under the Clean Air Act the current EPA’s interpretation of that statute as permitting it to regulate the release of mercury into the air by power plants.
And as a longstanding critic of the Chevron-deference doctrine, I’m thrilled with the Chevron implications of King. As someone who’s not fond of the effects of mercury on the health of anyone or anything who breathes, though, I won’t welcome the substantive result in tomorrow’s opinion. But I hope, and think, that the issue of statutory regulation of power plants will become a somewhat potent issue in next year’s national elections.
What won’t be a national issue in next year’s elections, federal and state, are tax credits for subsidies for healthcare premiums under the ACA. Which is precisely why Roberts and Kennedy decided that King must be decided as it was decided today. Last March, after the argument in the case, I predicted exactly correctly what would happen, and why—and have never looked back, instead rolling my eyes at all the continued handwringing of liberal pundits so worried about the case’s outcome.
I pointed out back then that Roberts, for all his desire to fully, thoroughly, complete the circa 1980s Conservative Legal Movement’s takeover of American law, point by point by point, wants first and foremost, always—always—to provide every possible assist to Republican candidates for federal and state elective office. Once it became clear, as it already had by the time King was argued at the Court, that a victory for the plaintiffs would spell electoral disaster for Republicans for federal and state office next year, Roberts’ vote, and the outcome of the case, was clear as well.
Tomorrow, in addition to the predictable ruling in the EPA/mercury-emissions case, and in addition to a declaration of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage—another 5-4 ruling, in Obergefell v. Hodges—the Court will issue an opinion in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, a case that could directly implicate continued Republican control of the House of Representatives. So the only question is, which way will Kennedy vote—and most people expect that he will vote Republican.
Which is to say, most people think he’ll make up the fifth vote to strike down as unconstitutional an amendment to Arizona’s state constitution, passed by the state’s voters in 2000, that removed the legislature’s authority to draw boundaries for federal congressional districts away and placed that authority with an independent redistricting commission. The legislature is challenging the amendment’s constitutionality under the Elections Clause, which states: “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for . . . Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” (Scotusblog notes that California has a similar setup.)
Obviously, since state legislative gross gerrymandering is largely responsible for Republican control of the House, presumably until after the next census in 2020, the Republican justices don’t want to invite, say, Pennsylvania voters to push through something similar in a voter referendum, reversing the extreme gerrymandering there by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2011. That includes Kennedy. But Kennedy authored Citizens United and reportedly was the one who encouraged his cohorts to take on issues that had not been raised in the case, in order to destroy the McCain-Feingold law, and he’s been on the extreme defense about it ever since. He could see this as some sort opportunity to regain some semblance of credibility on the nonpartisan front. I mean, you never know.
Okay, you probably do know. It won’t happen. The CW will prove right.
Yep.
I would have taken a split majority with maybe Roberts and Kennedy resting on Chevron and the rest on “Oh come on, the Moops didn’t effing invade Spain!” but this is a lot better result.
BTW not only are Republicans screwed because they can’t rewrite the rules on a Chevron basis but they can’t push this through via Reconciliation. Because that only works for measures whose combined effect is to reduce the Budget. And even their handpicked new guy at CBO couldn’t deliver that on scoring straight out repeal of ACA. They can bluster all they want but I don’t see them getting a filibuster proof majority in the next Congress even in the unlikely event they sneak into the White House.
Regarding Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, especially since you see it as the more significant decision, in one specific area that I’m aware, the disparate impact issue is absolutely crazy.
Third party auto lenders get applications that are sent to them by auto dealerships. What should be obvious, is that there is no racial classification on the paperwork the lenders receive from the dealerships. The dealerships themselves have some wiggle room in setting the rate the borrower pays above the rate that the lender sends them and those extra economics flow to the dealerships but the third party lender is blind to the applicant beyond the paper application.
The government, in its efforts to enforce the avoidance of disparate impact, apparently has attempted to model the likely race of the loan applicant using items on the application such as name, credit score, income. This model is kept secret from the third party lenders, yet they’re at risk of violating disparate impact issues if they fail on the model. So the lenders have had to create their own models attempting to guess the race of the applicants.
So here you have a process that should easy to maintain a process that is explicitly race blind, but thanks to government efforts necessitates a racial overlay. If the lenders proactively created such a model without the government doing it first, they would (rightly) be taken to task for doing so.
m.jed,
Based on my more than 30 years experience as a “third party auto lender” I find your comments ill informed. The idea that the banks do not discriminate on the basis of name and address is not based on any reality I lived in.
Your last sentence does show some knowledge of the subject, the problem is you believe such a “model” did not exist in any form. It has existed; it does exist; and it will exist.
Beverly
I know nothing, and i’m not even sure I understood what you were saying, but I offer this out of the cynicism of my heart:
no Justice is worried about his “credibility.” In the first place “logic” for them is not the same as logic for you or me. In the second place they know that neither the public nor the politicians have any “memory.”
In the third place, Roberts knows that the ACA was written by and for the insurance/medical industry. They like it. but the Republicans know that opposing it is good for THEIR business. So you will get ACA “saved” at the same time that Republicans are claiming it is the work of the Devil Obama-Hillary. Roberts doesn’t mind being the “bad” guy for the Republicans who have been running against the Supreme Court since Brown v Board. The letter I got from JEB demonstrates quite clearly that they are counting on their base being completely stupid. Note I am no friend of ACA, Obama, or Hillary but they are not in the same league with JEB and Roberts in the politics of stupidity.
The reverse-chevron decision is for the purpose of letting “industry” poison the people. When they need to re-reverse the chevron policy to the advantage of industry they will do it without blushing.
Yeah, Cob.
Everyone knows that no one other than those in the “insurance/medical industry” benefited from the ACA.
Well, other than more than 30 million people and counting…….
No, no, no, EMichael, you’re misreading Coberly’s point. He’s saying that 63-year-old Charles Drapeau of East Waterboro, ME, a multiple myeloma patient, and 22-year-old Lizzie Perez Jimenez of Tampa, FL., an asthma sufferer–both of them interviewed in yesterday’s front-page NTY article about people who were very worried about the outcome of King–aren’t people. Or work for the healthcare insurance or medical industry but still don’t have employer-based insurance.
The NYT article is at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/us/measuring-the-success-of-health-insurance-subsidies.html?_r=0.
It would be nice if AB commenters would confine their statements that don’t make blatantly false claims of fact. But, oh well…..
Beverly and EMichael
it would be nice if AB commenters and posters could read. I made a number of points in my comment, none of which was that the ACA benefited nobody but the insurance industry.
Actually, at the risk of putting too fine a point on it, it would be nice if “progressives” weren’t so damn stupid that they can’t resist being clever and hating even the people on their side. Their real side, not their goddamn stupid insistence upon missing the forest for the trees.
I’ll try again, in easy reader words: The Supreme Court is not worried about “consistency.” They have a political interest in both keeping ACA and keeping opposition to ACE alive for political reasons. They don’t care about “chevrons” upside down or upside up, they care about “advantage to industry,” and they will talk out both sides of their mouths to maintain that advantage.
But have it your own way, this “obviously” means that I don’t give a damn about the health care needs of the people too poor to buy insurance without ACE.
Did I make myself clear yet? you are too goddamn stupid to even try to talk to.
“In the third place, Roberts knows that the ACA was written by and for the insurance/medical industry.”
Seems pretty clear to me.
The greatest problem that progressives have in this country are the Green Lanterns of the left. They refuse to understand how our democracy works(and doesn’t work), and inhibit the progressive movement while bolstering the conservatives. And they refuse to even acknowledge that simple truth.
Well, based on the comments made by 3 of the justices in the marriage equality act: http://www.salon.com/2015/06/26/ask_the_nearest_hippie_the_conservative_scotus_justices_opinions_on_marriage_equality_are_hilariously_bitter/
I would say that the ACA ruling was primarily a pro business one thus maintaining their consistency of bias favoring business. That the people get something that helps them is a result, not an intent.
That liberals passed the ACA as an intent for the people (except for considering the deals made by Obama before hand to get the power player business on board) is accepted.
So as usual, the cause and result are in the eye of the beholder. And in this case, both sides get a win. Rare it is.
Emichael,
“The idea that the banks do not discriminate on the basis of name and address is not based on any reality I lived in.”
Fair enough – I wholeheartedly believe that banks discriminate on address. I also believe they discriminate based on income, marital status, number of dependents, payment history and credit scores. As for the name, that would seem to be a fairly easy item to anonymize to a social security number (if it’s not being done already, which I believe it is) as the paper shuffled from the dealerships to the lenders. And as I understand lending, these discriminatory practices are what’s known in the trade as “underwriting”.
But it’s not clear to me why knowing these things would enable a model to confidently predict race or why a computer spitting out a rate to offer on a loan would care.
EMichael
To someone without interneurons many things are ‘”clear” and “simple” that a more complicated organism would recognize as, if not complex and unclear, at least “different.”
There is absolutely nothing in what I said that would justify what you and Beverly said.
I will amend what I said: I know nothing about “goddamn.” So i will retract my assertioin that you are “too goddam stupid” and just leave it as you are too stupid. If you were a Republican I’d have to leave it at that. I expect nothing better from them. But it hurts me terribly to have to realize that my “friends on the left” are too stupid to be worth talking to.
Interesting that the insurance companies might like their premium allocation towards actual healthcare limited to 80 and 85% as opposed to profit margin or their charges to the elderly limited to 3 times the cost of insuring the youngest of the insured or they can no longer charge for preventative care or they can no longer deny insurance due to prior circumstance, etc. What were we all thinking and why didn’t we impose these requirements upon them previousl? When it comes to the PPACA, most people including AB do not know what they are talking about and appear to languish in make believe. The PPACA was a compromise between insurance companies and political interests of both sides.
It would be so nice, run, if Obama, or at least Clinton (our presumptive standard bearer in waiting), would, y’know, point out those provisions of the ACA and tie them into the fact that premiums are now rising at the lowest rate in many years. But, nah. Too complex for a sound bite, and it would involve mentioning actual relevant specifics, so neither Clinton nor Obama will wade into it. And, frankly, I don’t think Clinton has the intellectual capacity to state those facts and their connection. At least as of now, she’s running an incredibly simpleminded campaign, and I’m not sure she’s capable of anything else.
Bev:
Maggie and I had taken on one author, his sponsoring blog, and its numerous readers to rebut PPACA lies, explanations, and misconceptions. The name calling was interesting as were the examples cited which were similar to what we had heard in Michigan. The burden still lies with us to make ourselves knowledgeable to protect ourselves from the public interests, the highly placed naysayers, and the politicians.
The PPACA is not forever and it will mutate into something else and formidably improved. I hope to see something more on the level of a European model similar to what one might find in Germany. A two tired system of public funded healthcare and privately funded healthcare. I do not believe in single payer as it places our hope and trust in a Congress lacking respect for the constituency and giving sway to financial and business interests which is why we see SS, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, CHIPS, etc. under constant threat. Congress should live in the same manner as the constituents and be subject to the same threats and variations. The Ryans, Grahams, Cruzs, Boehner, McConnell, Michigan’s Senator Hune, etc. of the world would be less bold if there was an impact to them and they were subject to similar consequences as we are.
Influencing policy and belief is taking a different direction also. What was trusted before to be uninfluenced may need to be questioned as to the underlying influence of their words. The Brookings Institute, Center for American Progress, New America Foundation and other think tanks would be the ones to spread the news of lower increases in premiums. If you look at what they are doing today and who is beginning to fund them in their studies, you would find Lumina, Koch Brothers, WalMart and other corporations, foreign countries, individuals, in the mix and which constitute up to 25% of the donors to Brookings. Criticizing Senator Warrens stance on student loans is Beth Akers and Matt Chingos of New America Foundation which receives funding from Lumina whose directors were part of Sallie Mae. The threat is obvious in that corporations, etc. are turning to what were independent think tanks to publish supposed uninfluenced studies to get their messages across to the news media, Congress, and us. A new direction for those who wish to influence politics and beliefs. The Clintons, Warrens, etc. of the world are not powerful enough to withstand the onslaught I fear.
I need to finish one post on these new influences.
M.Jed,
It is not underwriting if identical credit profiles result in different rates based on race, that is discrimination.
In terms of auto lenders, designing a loan program that allows dealers to discriminate based solely on race makes lenders liable for the actions their program made possible.
The problem is not the accuracy or inaccuracy of the model being used to determine race of the borrower, the problem is a lenders’ willingness to be an accomplice to discriminatory actions by their dealers.
My understanding is that the banks(at least the ones that got caught) will have to repay the excess reserves to the borrowers after the borrowers are identified by other means than that model.
Pretty simple for the lenders. Do not put out lending programs that give dealers the right to change the terms of the loan. Course, that would cost the lenders extra profit(which is why they did it in the first place), and why they are responsible for the actions of their agents.
eMichael,
I agree with you that in most circumstances for the same credit profile an identical model output should lead to an identical rate offered (I say “most”, because risk management of the lender may dictate different terms due to, for example, geographic concentration for the 10th loan in an area versus the first).
My understanding is that when the dealerships change the terms of the loan that’s sent to the dealership from the lender, the excess profitability goes to the dealership, not the lender.
To the extent the lenders are “complicit”, as I understand, is that they compete for the relationship with the dealers on the wiggle room provided to the dealerships, e.g., Bank One says that dealerships are allowed to charge up to 0.5% more on a given loan relative to the rate offered by the lender and Bank Two “undercuts” Bank One by allowing them to charge up to 1.0% more on a given loan. But once the lender has secured an exclusive or preferred relationship with the dealership, and assuming I’m right that the surplus economics flow to the dealer rather than the lender, it’s still not clear to me how the lenders are systematic “accomplices”.
All my issues are for the loans at the dealer/lender level. I agree with the potential pitfalls of and corrective actions taken to prevent disparate impact for a borrower that physically walks into a bank to secure any loan where the risks of disparate impact are much greater.
“My understanding is that when the dealerships change the terms of the loan that’s sent to the dealership from the lender, the excess profitability goes to the dealership, not the lender. ”
No. All of the finance reserve(called leverage in mortgages) does not go to the dealer. The bank retains a portion of that reserve. Most common is 50/50, though I have seen various percentages, but none higher than 70% and that percentage was only on the first point of reserve. Also remember most of these loans(like mortgages) are sold by the banks. They sell the payment stream at the buy rate, retaining that extra profit for themselves. Same exact thing as happens in mortgages, and one thing Dodd-Frank has regulated(though the banks are of course attempting to change it)>
And in terms of “exclusive or preferred relationship with the dealership “, they change with the wind(well, maybe not that often).
Captive lenders always have a big advantage in dealerships, but no dealership worth its name relies on one, two or even three banks. Most I know routinely use 7 or 8, always keeping open the relationship and playing them against each other when possible. . Not to mention that banks change their loan programs on at least a monthly basis, and some times more often.
Run
and why would a Congress “lacking respect” be any more respectful of a two tier system than a single payer system?
and why give up single payer without a fight?
and i don’t mean a name-calling fight.
i would offer, have offered, for consideration a “public-private” system modeled on the way highways are paid for in this country:
worker paid insurance exactly as in Social Security… “llat” tax with a cap. this limits premiums to a reasonable “what you can afford” and doesn’t “tax the rich” to the point where they feel a need to fight for their own survival (different from the ideologues who will call it socialism). the “highway” part would be that the government would solicit bids from the private insurance companies to manage the day to day, while providing oversight to assure honesty and to look for ways to cut cost. government oversight is the only way to limit costs in a “your money or your life” marketplace. only government has the leverage to bargain fairly, and only government has the resources to mange research into “cost effectiveness.”
i haven’t seen an argument for “two tier” that explains its advantages. I don’t think “we can’t trust Congress” is a very compelling or hopeful argument. if we can’t trust congress for single payer, we can’t trust it for two tier… or anything else.
nor have i seen an “argument” from you and Beverly that did not begin and end with name calling.
One of the abilities that I believe every administration in US history has in common is the ability to count votes in the houses of Congress. That includes determining whether the number of yeas is greater than the number of yeas, and in the Senate the ability to count to 60.
The public option was dead before Obama actually took office. That was a known fact to anyone outside the administration who could count to 60.
I am constantly amazed that it is still a matter of discussion.
oops
“yeas and… nays” instead of “yeas and …..yeas”
EMichael
you are constantly amazed by many things.
does your understanding of the universe allow for the possibility of changing minds, even in the Senate? if not then, maybe when the former model of health care reached the point where its failure was obvious?
i have been doing my best to avoid criticizing Obamacare for some time now, waiting to see how it develops. my best guess is that health costs will continue to rise, the subsidies to the poor will not be enough to avoid bankrupting the poor who get sick, and the rich who are paying the subsidies will find ways to pass the cost onto their workers in lower wages, their customers in higher prices, and the “middle class” in higher taxes.
and one of the lesser known features of “vote counting” is to know exactly how many yes votes you need to pass a measure you really want without forcing colleagues to vote for it without sacrificing their ability to demagogue it for the rest of their careers.
Cob,
You should refrain from talking about subjects about which you know nothing.
Proof?
“and the rich who are paying the subsidies will find ways to pass the cost onto their workers in lower wages ”
Right in that sentence.
E:
Pretty good explanation of were the money comes from and where it goes. http://www.alignamerica.com/node/62 The ones most in danger are those just above the cut off foe premium and out of pocket subsidies.
EMichael
so is it a secret?
or do you think that if you tell me i “know nothing” about a subject which is more or less conventional wisdom, i will just hang my head and say, oh sorry massa Michael, i didn’t know i know nothing, but now that you have told me i know nothing i will know better than to talk about it.
Cob,
You could just read Run’s link and try to learn something.
Or, you can just take every single government program and predict it will fail if A, B or C happens. Startling insight there.
EMichael
which link is that?
you included no link in your comment.
you do not reference which run link you are talking about.
if it’s the one in run’s comment posted AFTER your comment, that would have made it hard for me to check out BEFORE he posted it.
in general i don’t have time to chase links from people who don’t understand what they read in the first place, and are too lazy, or incapable, to summarize something they read to give me a clue about whether it is even worth looking at.
the sad thing here is not so much that you aren’t convincing me of anything… who knows what the hell you are talking about?… but that this is the sorry way you convince yourself… no thinking whatsoever, just free association with many gaps and leaps to something you liked the sound of.
EMichael
I looked at Run’s link… the one that appeared after your comment and after my reply, but inserted by the “magic of Run” before my reply.
actually a fairly good summary of where ACA money comes from.
BUT IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY COMMENT which you are making snotty remarks about.
I said “the rich” will pass their costs through to their customers and employees. which, I think, is the opinion of “most economists” at least in the case of Social Security, which ACA is somewhat like.
As for “just take every government program and predict it will fail”… seems quite a bit at odds with my ten years on AB predicting that SS will NOT fail.
You see, Michael, just taking the words that pop into your head and spitting them out because they sound like devasting insults to you, doesn’t really take the place of actual thinking.
When Run posted that link is not important. You should read it and try to learn something, king of the one trick ponies.
I’ll give you a hint. My wife and I paid some ACA tax last year. We do not have employees.
BTW,
I would appreciate it if you refrain from posting quotes from me without the entire quote.
EMichael
I read Run’s like, as you might have deducted if you had read my comment to which you are replying. As I said, it is a fairly good accounting of where the money comes from…. in the first instance. It has nothing to do with my assertion that the rich will pass their costs onto their employees/customers.
If you have no employees or customers you are not “the rich.”
I don’t think I need to quote your entire comment to call your attention to the part of it that is relevant to my reply. If you can’t remember what you said, your comment is still right there on the page for all to see.
I’d say try to stop being an idiot. But I don’t think you are even capable of trying.
I should have said “Run’s LINK” not “Run’s like” in my comment above.
I have to go to work, so i’ll EMichael to have the last word and feel like a winner.
No. No conversation with you leaves anyone feeling like a winner.
If you notice, our posts were almost simultaneous as 10:21 and 10:22. leading to some confusion.
On the other hand, when you state:
“As for “just take every government program and predict it will fail”… seems quite a bit at odds with my ten years on AB predicting that SS will NOT fail.”
from my quote of
“you can just take every single government program and predict it will fail if A, B or C happens.”
that is dishonest.
EMichael:
Actually this: “+.9% Increase in Medicare Tax Rate” (plus next item…) and this: “3.8% New Tax on unearned income for high-income taxpayers= $210.2 billion ($200,000 for individual and $250,000 for joint filers)” does apply to the upper income brackets. Quite honestly, I do not feel the need to explain everything about the PPACA. I could; but, I will not as people should be researching it themselves before they decide to favor it, disfavor it, or talk about it. I supply information too which allows people to learn on their own. 🙂
EMichael
no. not dishonest. maybe lazy. i am tired of arguing with you.
I think what made me tired was that while I MADE NO PREDICTION about ACA, EMichael tells me “you can just take every program and predict it will fail If A or B or C…”
which, besides the fact that I MADE NO PREDICTION, would still leave the question of whether A,B,orC, were likely or unlikely…
and, without going over this again and starting some new line of argument from EMichael which has nothing to do with anything I have said… I will just leave the interested reader to draw his own conclusions, if any.
Run
well and good, but if you are advocating for anything you can’t really rely on “people to do their own research.” They won’t. and they won’t reach the same conclusions you reach (not because yours are wrong, but because people think differently).
And while I actually appreciated your offering the summary of where ACA gets the money… that is only a first order analysis: There are, or at least might be, other factors that seem more important to other people.
There is a moral to this story.
Not least of which is that much of this thread has been taken up by EMichael (and Beverly) arguing against me for being opposed to ACA, when my original comment had nothing to do with being opposed to ACA but just about me being cynical about the reasons for Roberts deciding “for” it.
I was amused this morning to hear Ted Cruz saying exactly what I said about “vote counting.” But that doesn’t mean I like Ted Cruz.
But this is where I came in.
“i have been doing my best to avoid criticizing Obamacare for some time now, waiting to see how it develops. my best guess is that health costs will continue to rise, the subsidies to the poor will not be enough to avoid bankrupting the poor who get sick, and the rich who are paying the subsidies will find ways to pass the cost onto their workers in lower wages, their customers in higher prices, and the “middle class” in higher taxes.”
“I think what made me tired was that while I MADE NO PREDICTION about ACA”
like talking to a kitchen table……
well, yes
it is like talking to a kitchen table.
go way back up to the top of the page. and see if you can find where your need to be snotty changed the tone of the conversation. i said nothing about ACA, but about the supreme court. you have a need to fight against imaginary enemies and the conversation goes to hell from there.
if we were not in the middle of a snot fight i would recognize that “my best guess” looked like a prediction to you. it wasn’t meant as one…
like i said, this is where i came in.
My best guess is that all of the numbers being run about the solvency of social security are wrong in that the rich will find ways to eliminate the employer contribution thus making solvency impossible while their workers receive lower wages.
EMichael
I am sure that looks to you like a parallel construction to “my best guess” (mine, coberly’s, above), but it’s not. which i will try to show, with no hope of success.
In the first place, “all the numbers” on SS are not “wrong.” The numbers produced by the Trustees are “the” numbers that is the official projection (not prediction) of the finances of Social Security. My only contribution to those numbers is to show what they mean in terms of employee wages over periods of time that can be meaningfully understood by those employees. I don’t make “predictions about Social Security.
In the second place, it is already a “fact” that employers do pass on “the employer share” to the employee. Unless you want to engage in a pointless debate about whether the employer “would” pay the employee in direct wages what he now pays in “the employer share of the SS tax” if he were not required to pay that money directly to the treasury.
So your “prediction” about SS amounts to nonsense. Sorry I haven’t made that completely clear, but I think I have said enough here so anyone interested can work it out for himself.
As to MY “prediction” about ACA, it was not a prediction, or not meant to be one, and certainly it was not a prediction that ACA “would fail”. What it was… and it is important to consider the context in which it emerged… was that after I said I was “avoiding comment” about ACA (I don’t know if that is an exact quote. Does that make it a lie?) because I was waiting to see how it worked out, I felt some need to offer some clue as to my reservations about it… that being my belief that the money for ACA would come (better to have said “comes” as “will come” does sound like a prediction) ultimately from “the people” as opposed to “the rich” by the well understood economics of “passing your costs onto your customers”… or your employees (in the way “most economists” say the SS “employer share” is ‘”really the employees money” [it is, but it’s also a semantic trick the enemies of SS use to confuse people about SS,,, topic for another time]. that is not a “prediction” it’s a kind of “analysis” or “pointing at” an underlying fact or mechanism. in particular it has nothing to do with whether or not ACA “would fail.” I am reasonably sure that as long as the politicians, and that means the insurance interests, are happy with ACA, it will not “fail.” But that doesn’t mean it will bring down the costs of medical care. it probably does (not a prediction, a guess about how it works) does mean that the extra money brought into the medical care industry by those required to carry insurance who did not previously think they needed it, and by the higher taxes on “the rich,” passed through to their customers/employees, will be enough to pay for those people who previously needed insurance but couldn’t get it under the “private” month-to-month model of risk. good for those people. not, i think, the best way to pay for it. and certainly it does not represent a reduction in the “rents” of medical providers and insurance companies. mostly it seems to me that it provides a way for them to make more money… money that will come mostly from the working class. So while you think you have found a way to “make the rich pay” ( and given both the rich and the young a reason to feel abused by “the government”) you will only have found a way to save the insurance industry from its prior model that would have collapsed of its own weight. Again, that’s not meant as a prediction. It’s meant as a kind of analysis (kind of, because I do not provide real numbers and rigorous cause-effect mechanism).
So, I don’t know if this has succeeded. Too long for most people, including me. Not likely to succeed with EMichael who has a “need” to prove me wrong. Even if he has to invent a disagreement to start with.
And what I really wanted to explain was the thought process by which people work themselves into this kind of pointless argument, but that is probably beyond the patience of the reader and the limits of my own time and mental capacity.
Cob,
You should try to read things more carefully. Your entire diatribe is based on not reading the end of my comment:
“while their workers receive lower wages.”
EMichael
this is tedious. do you know what a diatribe is?
can you explain more clearly how the end of your sentence affects the “argument”
actually there is no argument which implies a progression of propositions, to be agreed upon or not, in turn, leading from a place of beginning to, if not a conclusion, or agreement, but at least progress in understanding..
here, all “argument” means is a nasty kind of forced disagreement based on persistent refusal to even try to understand what the other person is saying.
your comment, with or without, the “while workers receive lower wages” doesn’t make any kind of sense at all.
i read pretty carefully, and usually pretty well, but i don’t read minds, especially not minds that are too disorganized to find a pair of socks, let alone a rational, never mind true, “argument” in the first sense.
now, i am going to let you declare victory and go home. this has been a stupid waste of time.