Supreme Court Issues 5-to-4 Rulings, But Not On Obamacare

The Supreme Court announced four decisions today, three of them decided by slender 5-to-4 margins, but not the long-awaited ruling about the constitutionality of Obamacare. I discuss these four decisions at this link. Two of the three decisions in which the court split 5-to-4 were cases in which there was no ideological division among the justices, and both liberal and “conservative” justices joined the majority opinion. That, too, is unremarkable, as I explain here, and Point of Law explained explained earlier, contrary to the false conventional wisdom that depicts 5-to-4 splits as being caused only by politics or ideological divisions on the Court.

Although there was no ruling in the Obamacare case today, it is expected within a couple weeks. In The Washington Post, a disillusioned Robert Samuelson, who writes about economic topics for the newspaper, gives Obamacare a thumbs down, in an article entitled “The Folly of Obamacare.” He notes that Obamacare “discourages job creation by raising the price of hiring,” “worsens the federal budget problem,” and effectively “discriminates against the young.”

As we previously explained, Obamacare’s regulations and taxes will harm the health care system and reduce employment. The Dean of Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey Flier, noted that Obamacare will harm life-saving medical innovation. Obamacare is causing layoffs in the medical device industry. Obamacare will raise the cost of insurance by at least 55 percent in Ohio, according to one study. It taxes medical devices and cosmetic surgery, arbitrarily discriminates against certain hospitals, and raises taxes starting in 2013 on investors. The Associated Press and others have noted that it breaks a number of Obama campaign promises. Earlier, CEI filed an amicus brief against the health care law on behalf of Minnesota and North Carolina legislators.