Did it actually happen?

[kthx]

There's no reason to think this (relatively mild) health care bill will get struck down. Social security hasn't gotten struck down, nor has medicare or medicaid. Those not only force compliance, but in many cases force compliance to no personal benefit (not everyone is poor, not everyone makes it to old age). Health care is more of an interstate commerce issue than old age safety nets, especially since many HMOs operate in numerous states. It's really not an issue though because the Court has historically let the Congress do basically whatever they want under the auspices of the commerce clause and the elastic clause.*

As for the religious exemptions, the Amish one will go over just fine. The Amish already don't pay social security taxes as well as other tax code exemptions. The Christian Scientists one will be interesting, though, because I could see that becoming an issue. I don't even know how that got in there, but I'd imagine some silly group paid a bunch of money to have their names thrown in with the Amish. If it does become an issue and the Supreme Court finds it unconstitutional then that statute alone will likely be struck down - not the entire bill.

*US v. Lopez and US v. Morrison being notable recent exceptions, although neither of those dealt with commerce explicitly (guns in schools in one case and laws against violence against women in the other)

Well yeah the Amish was predictable honestly, and well they shouldn't be beholden to any of this crap, they are basically protected like an Indian reservation would be. But anyways two things can happen, either a rule gets added that adds more religious groups for the people who can choose for religious reasons to not pay into this bill which would give people of all faiths a reasons to not do it. Or unfortunately more likely they will just remove Christian Scientists from the bill and say that no religious group can escape the bills destructive force.

About the first thing, the commerce clause only applies to people who are engaging in commerce, and this bill taxes you and forces you buy something for just living which is the highest chance of the part of this bill that destroys freedom in our country to be removed. You get taxed for medicare and medicaid because you are working, and this is the clause that allows for states to force people to purchase car insurance.. because by driving a car and buying a car you are participating in commerce. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Anyways I am hardly a constitutional scholar and I hope that the supreme court will take a real look at this, and it is a fairly conservative court after looking at some of the gun law changes, and campaign donation changes that took place the previous year. I wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of trickery though to force one of them to step down, adding an age limit, and I definitely wouldn't be surprised to find out one morning that Alito got assassinated and that he was going to get replaced by some liberal just in time for the ruling on this bill. I wouldn't put it past our current administration.

[Epinephrine]

Considering Obama was a constitutional law professor, I'd say he probably would have not signed something which obviously wouldn't work. That and I'm sure they had an army of lawyers looking over it to make sure it was legit.

[kthx]

Either that or he is too pompous to care about it, his hubris could be his weakness.

man hubris and pompous in the same sentence, gold.

[gran guerrero]

happen? actually, it did.

[paradise!]

Either that or he is too pompous to care about it, his hubris could be his weakness.

man hubris and pompous in the same sentence, gold.

do you notice your speculations are snowballing?