The Shrine

From CNN:

In a major win for the Obama administration, the Supreme Court held in a 6-3 decision that the Affordable Care Act authorized federal tax credits for eligible Americans living not only in states with their own exchanges but also in the 34 states with federal exchanges.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for himself, Justice Anthony Kennedy and the four liberal justices. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent, joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. "If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter."

In a dissent, Scalia said "we should start calling this law SCOTUScare," referring to the two times the Court has saved the law.

The ruling staved off a major political showdown and what would have been a mad scramble in some states to set up their own healthcare exchanges to keep millions from losing healthcare coverage.

It's bizarre to me that so many people would spend so much time and money trying to deny affordable health insurance coverage to millions.

It is Fox to blame more than anything else, in my analysis. People who exist on a steady diet of Fox News literally live in an altered reality. 50% of what is shown on the network or more is completely fake. It is designed to make them support war, hate the healing of the sick, vote up corrupt Defense subsidies and down all benefits for the civilian sector - I shit you not.

The thing that blows my mind is that our Southern conservatives in particular were the worst hit by NAFTA and are suffering the worst poverty to this day - and this grand front that the GOP is putting on that the entire party is solvent and Thurston-Howelly behind the scenes is a sham caused by shame. GOP still has the largest old-money fortunes but overall the Dems are possibly richer now; the average that is measured certainly shows liberals coping with the ongoing lingering effects of the Great Recession on Main Street (yeah, it's finally getting better, but it's taking a WHILE if you look at small business statistics instead of the megacorps), in both wealth and education, better than conservatives, at least statistically.

You would think the rural red state set that got utterly economically obliterated by NAFTA would appreciate the economic help fixing their falling-out teeth, their heart problems from meth and cocaine and paint huffing abuse, their stress migraines, and so forth, but no. That same set that got obliterated by NAFTA still doesn't want a syringe full of medicine if it's offered by a black man. Sad but true. I am not stereotyping everyone out there but there is an AWFUL lot of this still going on.

That same set that got obliterated by NAFTA still doesn't want a syringe full of medicine if it's offered by a black man.

I don't think it's the race of the person who instigated the health care reform that bothers the Fox News crowd. The same people hated Clinton's (aborted) health care reform just as hard. No, this reform creates a massive wealth transfer to those on the lower end of the economic ladder both to subsidize private insurance and also to provide public Medicaid coverage. Poverty is often seen as a proxy for race in the US. Given that, I believe the main driver for hating Obamacare is conservative whites loathing their money going in perpetuity to minorities to provide them more healthcare. In the Conservative mindset healthcare is an earned privilege and not a right. To conservatives, these untrustworthy minorities are getting something for free--that they should have earned--and getting it on their dime.

I'm not saying there are other valid reasons to oppose this law (there are) but I'm saying that racial resentment is the prime driver.

I definitely have to disagree. There are a LOT LOT LOT of people in this country still who oppose every single thing Obama does because he is - to them - "black", and not one of them; discussions of Obama's white mother and mixed-race heritage are doomed before they start, of course.

You never hear most conservatives protesting Romneycare. I don't remember them hating Hillary's try quite as hard, but that's probably because the private health insurance system was much more robust then and the 1990's effort was doomed to failure before it started.

That's a good montage. Lots of media outlets selling the fantasy of "The End of ObamaCare" to keep conservative viewers watching those commercials for prescription drugs and gold.