Individual Mandate

Related Live blog Live blog: Supreme Court and Affordable Care Act (ACA) aka ObamaCare Photos Scenes from the hearings A Primer on the ACA (aka ObamaCare) I A Primer on the ACA, II: Follow the Money ACA vs. ObamaCare: What's In a Name? The Supreme Court and the ACA ACA Repeal? For Massachusetts, So What? Disappointing Cuts to the ACA Prevention Fund Put Up or Shut Up Time -- For or Against the ACA March Madness...

It is quite possible that Neal Gabler ("Supremely partisan: Election-changing judicial activism has no place in the nation's highest court," Op-ed, May 6) and other critics of the Supreme Court will be embarrassed if, as I believe most likely, the court decides next month to uphold the individual mandate in the health care law. In Gonzales v. Raich in 2005, the court, by a 6-3 majority, sustained the broad power of Congress. Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring, stated: "The relevant question is simply whether the means chosen are ‘reasonably adapted' to the attainment of a...

A Supreme Court ruling against President Obama's landmark health care law could prompt challenges to the Massachusetts law that inspired it, according to legal specialists and activists following the case. The legal case against the federal Affordable Care Act pivots on the constitutionality of its requirement that nearly every American obtain health insurance. Massachusetts was the first state to introduce such an individual mandate when lawmakers passed Governor Mitt Romney's health care plan in 2006.

For five years now, "Obamacare" has been a dirty word in American politics: a term used by conservatives to dismiss President Obama's agenda for health care reform. The bumper-sticker-friendly sentiment "Repeal Obamacare" has become a favorite mantra of Republicans on the stump. In recent weeks, however, as the Supreme Court geared up to consider dismantling the health care legislation passed by Congress in 2010, the term "Obamacare" began popping up somewhere new: among the Obama team members themselves.

WASHINGTON — Republicans were for President Obama’s requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it. The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that has been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach. Mitt Romney, weighing another run for the GOP presidential nomination, signed such a requirement into law at the state level as Massachusetts governor in 2006.

First in a series on Mitt Romney and the Massachusetts health care overhaul. In late spring 2005, Mitt Romney gathered with a dozen top policy and political advisers in a conference room near the governor’s suite on the third floor of the State House. For two years, they had grappled with the abstruse complexities of health care reform, sifting data, evaluating input from experts, and testing theories to craft a plan that would expand coverage to nearly everyone in the state and not break the bank.

IF THE US Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, there will be one big loser. No, not Barack Obama. Nor Congress. It will be the high court itself. This was a case many thought the government would win relatively easily, based both on a landmark 1942 precedent and on a 2005 case whose six-vote majority included Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. But judging from Wednesday's arguments and exchanges, the court's conservative judicial activists are much less likely to take a traditionally broad and deferential view of Congress's Commerce Clause powers in...

It is quite possible that Neal Gabler ("Supremely partisan: Election-changing judicial activism has no place in the nation's highest court," Op-ed, May 6) and other critics of the Supreme Court will be embarrassed if, as I believe most likely, the court decides next month to uphold the individual mandate in the health care law. In Gonzales v. Raich in 2005, the court, by a 6-3 majority, sustained the broad power of Congress. Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring, stated: "The relevant question is simply whether the means chosen are ‘reasonably adapted' to the...

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney urged President Obama in 2009 to adopt an individual mandate as part of his national health care overhaul, according to an article unearthed by an online news site. In the op-ed article for USA Today, Romney also exhorted Obama to use the "lessons we learned in Massachusetts" when it came to the issue of health care. As governor, Romney signed into law health care reform that required individuals to buy insurance. Buzzfeed on Monday disclosed the article and three television news clips from the summer of 2009 in which Romney bragged about taking on health care reform...

The state Senate, in an 11th-hour bid to keep $385 million in annual federal Medicaid money coming into Massachusetts, will debate a slimmed-down healthcare bill today that aims to cover roughly half of the state's uninsured residents through new subsidized insurance plans. Senate President Robert E. Travaglini released the new plan after talks with the House over a more comprehensive healthcare measure deadlocked. The state, he said, faces an "emergency situation," because it could lose the Medicaid money if the Legislature doesn't act immediately on a...

IF THE US Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, there will be one big loser. No, not Barack Obama. Nor Congress. It will be the high court itself. This was a case many thought the government would win relatively easily, based both on a landmark 1942 precedent and on a 2005 case whose six-vote majority included Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. But judging from Wednesday's arguments and exchanges, the court's conservative judicial activists are much less likely to take a traditionally broad and deferential view of Congress's Commerce Clause powers in this matter.

A Supreme Court ruling against President Obama's landmark health care law could prompt challenges to the Massachusetts law that inspired it, according to legal specialists and activists following the case. The legal case against the federal Affordable Care Act pivots on the constitutionality of its requirement that nearly every American obtain health insurance. Massachusetts was the first state to introduce such an individual mandate when lawmakers passed Governor Mitt Romney's health care plan in 2006.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative justices on Tuesday sharply questioned whether the government can force Americans to carry health insurance, wondering in arguments over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul if Congress might next force people to buy broccoli or burial insurance. ‘‘If the government can do that, what else can it" do? asked Justice Antonin Scalia, referring to the individual mandate portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The congressional requirement to buy health care insurance is the linchpin of the...

Related Live blog Live blog: Supreme Court and Affordable Care Act (ACA) aka ObamaCare Photos Scenes from the hearings A Primer on the ACA (aka ObamaCare) I A Primer on the ACA, II: Follow the Money ACA vs. ObamaCare: What's In a Name? The Supreme Court and the ACA ACA Repeal? For Massachusetts, So What? Disappointing Cuts to the ACA Prevention Fund Put Up or Shut Up Time -- For or Against...

MONDAY ARGUMENTS Is it too early to consider this case since the health law's penalties do not start until 2014? The central provision of the health care law, the individual mandate, requires some Americans to obtain insurance or, starting in 2014, face a penalty. A 19th-century law, the Anti-Injunction Act, forbids challenges to tax assessments until they are due. If the Supreme Court considers the individual mandate a tax, it may conclude that it cannot hear a challenge until April 15, 2015, when the first penalties become due. Both the...

WASHINGTON - The three days of Supreme Court arguments that start Monday on the constitutionality of President Obama's health care law will be a legal marathon, and the lawyers involved have been training. Last week, there were so many of the mock argument sessions, which lawyers call moot courts, that they threatened to exhaust something that had never been thought in short supply: Washington lawyers willing to pretend to be Supreme Court justices. The problem, said Paul D. Clement, who represents the 26 states challenging the law, is not just the length of the...

Republican presidential hopefuls Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry are tying rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich together and calling them not conservative. Bachmann referred repeatedly to "Newt-Romney," saying Gingrich and Romney hold similar views on health care, illegal immigration, cap-and-trade legislation and the payroll tax cut extension. Perry said he agrees with Bachmann. He attacked Romney for including an individual mandate in the insurance plan he signed as governor of Massachusetts.