Tag Archives: Halbig v. Burwell

What We Know And Don’t Know About Obamacare

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The White House spent billions last year on efforts like this to promote Obamacare enrollment. How will they do this year? [Credit: Washington Post]

The White House spent bil­lions last year on efforts like this to pro­mote Oba­macare enroll­ment. How will they do this year? [Cred­it: Wash­ing­ton Post]

If you are a law­ful res­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and you lack health insur­ance today, it’s almost cer­tain­ly your fault.  You can’t blame your employ­er, the gov­ern­ment or the insur­ance com­pa­nies.  It’s on you.

That is the last­ing achieve­ment of Oba­macare, whose sec­ond open enroll­ment peri­od began yes­ter­day. Gone are the days when peo­ple with pre-exist­ing med­ical con­di­tions could not find afford­able cov­er­age.   Whether the ends of this achieve­ment, which are unde­ni­ably good, jus­ti­fy the means its sup­port­ers employed to win its enact­ment remains a mat­ter of con­tro­ver­sy. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

The President, His Critics And the Politics of Impatience

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What do these two men have in common? More than you might think. [Credit: Politico]

What do these two men have in com­mon? More than you might think. [Cred­it: Politico]

“But what I’m not going to do is just wait.  I think it’s fair to say that I’ve shown a lot of patience…But what we can’t do is just keep on wait­ing.”  Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Novem­ber 5, 2014

The Con­sti­tu­tion offers no rem­e­dy for pres­i­den­tial impa­tience. Pres­i­dents, Mem­bers of Con­gress and judges are some­times con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required to “just keep on wait­ing.”  And that is some­thing office­hold­ers of both polit­i­cal par­ties seem increas­ing­ly unwill­ing to do.  When it comes to cir­cum­vent­ing the rules to achieve the polit­i­cal objec­tives of the moment, the Pres­i­dent and some of his most stri­dent con­ser­v­a­tive foes are soulmates.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →