The AP’s annual poll of U.S. editors picked Obamacare as the top story of 2013, followed by the Boston Marathon Bombing, and the Papal Transition.
The saga of “Obamacare” – as the Affordable Care Act is widely known – received 45 first-place votes out of the 144 ballots cast for the top 10 stories. The marathon bombing received 29 first-place votes and the papal transition 21.
How did I not know about this? SCOTUSBlog: these are the types of things that should be in your roundup. OK? Thankfully Michelle Olsen knows everything.
Here are RBG’s remarks, and some of the highlights:
Those of you who have attended Court sessions know what a wise and witty participant Elena is at oral argument. Her opinions display the best of the careful jurist’s art — she never seeks to carry the day by sweeping opposing arguments off the table. And her style is irresistibly engaging. The reader is apt to think, from her clarity, fluency, and good humor, that she was assigned an altogether easy case. But I know the hours and hours it takes to make it sound that way.
Elena has been a star performer in whatever she undertakes.
Her first year as a member of the Court, under the tutelage of Justice Scalia, she became an intrepid hunter. The personal trainer with whom she boxes tells me she has the best Jab, Cross, Hook punch combination on the bench.
As junior Justice, she heads the cafeteria committee, a truly daunting assignment. There’s not much one can do to make it better. But she found one thing she could fix even on a paltry budget. Thanks to Elena, a frozen yogurt machine dispenses sustenance all can enjoy.
RBG is kvelling!
The court in Utah cited Nino. Now, so does the court in Ohio. I don’t think he is amused:
This conclusion flows from the Windsor decision of the United States Supreme Court this past summer, which held that the federal government cannot refuse to recognize a valid same-sex marriage. United States v. Windsor, ___ U.S. ___, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013). And now it is just as Justice Scalia predicted1 – the lower courts are applying the Supreme Court’s decision,2 as they must, and the question is presented whether a state can do what the federal government cannot – i.e., discriminate against same-sex couples … simply because the majority of the voters don’t like homosexuality (or at least didn’t in 2004). Under the Constitution of the United States, the answer is no, as follows.3
Jason Mazzone is also not amused.
Whatever the merits of Judge Robert J. Shelby’s ruling today that Utah’s same-sex marriage ban violates the Fourteenth Amendment, his opinion would have appeared considerably more judicial had he resisted the urge to give Justice Scalia the finger. ….
Inasmuch as Justice Scalia has never “recommended” that lower federal courts strike down state marriage laws, Judge Shelby’s “agreement” with Scalia is nothing of the kind. Call me old fashioned, but it seems to me that if you can’t fairly represent the opinions of Supreme Court justices, you have little business being on a district court.
And the deadline to sign up for Obamacare was extended till Christmas Eve, 2013.
This is not how the President pictured his Christmas Eve 2013, when the Senate passed Obamacare on Christmas Eve 2009.
There’s a nice symmetry there..
Merry Christmas Eve everyone!
At midnight Monday, the official deadline arrives for Americans to sign up through the new federal health insurance exchange for health plans that begin Jan. 1. But, without any public announcement, Obama administration officials have changed the rules so that people will have an extra day to enroll, according to two individuals with knowledge of the switch.
Over the weekend, government officials and outside IT contractors working on the online marketplace’s computer system made a software change that automatically gives people a Jan. 1 start date for their coverage as long as they enroll by 11:59 p.m. Christmas Eve.
Especially for insurance companies.
The switch is the most recent rule change — some by government officials, and at least one by the insurance industry — as a milestone approaches for what has been a tumultuous three-month start of the long-awaited opportunity for Americans to buy new health plans under a 2010 law intended to reshape the nation’s health-care system.
…
One individual familiar with the unannounced extension said that it is, in part, intended as a buffer in case the Web site has trouble if a last-minute surge of insurance-seekers proved more than the computer system could handle.
According to the two individuals, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity about a matter that is not public, the one-day extension is automatic, built into the software, and cannot be overridden by individual insurers if they object.
Asked to explain the reason for the extension — and why it has been kept secret — officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency overseeing the health exchange, did not immediately respond.
…
On Monday morning, one insurance industry official, informed by The Washington Post about the quiet deadline extension, criticized the move. “Making yet another last-minute change to the rules by shortening an already-tight time period in which to process enrollments makes it even harder to ensure people who have selected a plan are able to have their coverage begin in January,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the change has not been made public.
Part of me wants to feel bad for insurance companies. The other part recalls they made a pact with the devil (not I don’t mean that literally), and will pay the price. But of course, we will have to bail them out when they go bankrupt. Or we will need a public option. But that is a feature, not a bug of Obamacare.