“You can see it’s not selling very well. Why don’t you try to come up with something else?” That candid quote of the day comes from Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, responding to solicitor general Donald Verrilli’s argument before the High Court on Wednesday that a provision of a controversial Arizona law requiring police officers to ask for [...]
Supreme Court
After three days of oral arguments and intense speculation in the press, the Supreme Court is said to be holding an initial vote Friday, March 30, on the fate of President Obama’s landmark health reform law. While conventional wisdom has swung against the high court’s upholding the law, a close reading of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s [...]
If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual health insurance mandate, but leaves most or all of the rest of the Affordable Care Act intact, Congress will have some work to do. Without some way to push uninsured healthy Americans into the marketplace, insurance prices could creep upward until they become unaffordable for everyone.
Although the Supreme Court won’t rule until June and predicting its decision is impossible for even the most seasoned experts, Tuesday hearings on the health insurance mandate’s constitutionality left its supporters worried it might not survive. If the requirement falls and the rest of the law remains, chaos could follow, along with a host of unintended consequences like rising premiums and even less access to coverage than exists today.
After Donald Verrilli’s halting performance defending a national health-insurance mandate before the Roberts court on Tuesday, the White House Wednesday morning issued a statement of support for their beleaguered solicitor general. “Mr. Verrilli is an extraordinarily talented advocate who possesses a sharp mind, keen judgment and unquestionable integrity,” White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said. “He [...]
First, if you haven’t read Kate Pickert’s excellent coverage of Tuesday’s supreme court arguments about the Affordable Care Act, you should. Right now. Reading Kate, I find the performance of the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. appalling. After all the energy expended over 60 years in bringing universal health insurance to fruition, the man couldn’t [...]
On Tuesday, the High Court appeared just as divided as the public and the lower courts whose rulings have both upheld and struck down the new health care law in the past year and a half. And when Obama’s Solicitor General Donald Verrilli stepped up to explain to the High Court that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is within congressional authority to impose, he faced more skepticism than he probably expected.
The Obama Administration’s fight to preserve the new health care law’s individual mandate appeared to take a dark turn Tuesday. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, arguing before the Supreme Court that the government has authority to force individuals to purchase health insurance, faced tough questions from justices, particularly frequent swing-vote Anthony Kennedy, and Chief Justice John [...]
If the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s sweeping new health care law, seems complicated, the Supreme Court case parsing its constitutionality is far more so. This week, over three days, justices on the High Court are hearing six hours of arguments on four distinct but intricately related pieces of the law. The first session, on [...]
TIME captures proponents and critics of the Affordable Care Act as they square off outside the Supreme Court, which is hearing arguments on the law’s constitutionality this week in Washington.
