The struggling restaurant industry is the canary in the coal mine for Obamacare's negative impact

The Non-Affordable Care Act’s Restaurant Recession - Rising health-care premiums and costs are leaving consumers with less money to dine out.

Excerpt:

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, recently acknowledged what many Americans have known for some time: “the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable to increasing numbers of people.” Bill Clinton went further, calling it “the craziest thing in the world” that under ObamaCare some hardworking Americans “wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.” So much for President Obama’s oft-repeated promise that the average family would see the cost of coverage decline by $2,500 a year. 

The burden these increased health-care costs place on working and middle-class Americans is inexcusable. But ObamaCare’s failure is having broader implications for economic growth. With GDP already averaging a mere 2% since the recession ended and hovering around 1.5% over the past four quarters, we should be making faster growth a political priority. That is not what the Affordable Care Act is doing.

The struggling restaurant industry is the canary in the coal mine for the Affordable Care Act’s impact on the broader economy. Unless Congress repeals and replaces the law, as both Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan advocate, with a patient-focused alternative that relies on competition to keep costs down and quality up, the outlook for economic growth and patient care will remain bleak.

Comment: Image source

Obamacare - some "essentially paying something for nothing"

NYTimes: Health Law Tax Penalty? I’ll Take It, Millions Say

Excerpt:

Iris I. Burnell, the manager of a Jackson Hewitt Tax Service office on Capitol Hill, said she met this week with a client in his late 50s who has several part-time jobs and wants to buy insurance on the exchanges. But, she said, “he’s finding that the costs are prohibitive on a monthly basis, so he has resigned himself to the fact that he will have to suffer the penalty.”

When Congress was writing the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010, lawmakers tried to balance carrots and sticks: subsidies to induce people to buy insurance and tax penalties “to ensure compliance,” in the words of the Senate Finance Committee.

But the requirement for people to carry insurance is one of the most unpopular provisions of the health law, and the Obama administration has been cautious in enforcing it. The I.R.S. portrays the decision to go without insurance as a permissible option, not as a violation of federal law.

The law “requires you and each member of your family to have qualifying health care coverage (called minimum essential coverage), qualify for a coverage exemption, or make an individual shared responsibility payment when you file your federal income tax return,” the tax agency says on its website.

Some consumers who buy insurance on the exchanges still feel vulnerable. Deductibles are so high, they say, that the insurance seems useless. So some think that whether they send hundreds of dollars to the I.R.S. or thousands to an insurance company, they are essentially paying something for nothing.

Truth in advertising from an insurance CEO

Excerpt:

Thinking of signing up for ObamaCare? You’re better off spending your money on beer, says Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini. “As the rates rise, the healthier people pull out because the out-of-pocket costs aren’t worth it,” Bertolini tells Bloomberg. “Young people can do the math. Gas for the car, beer on Fridays and Saturdays, health insurance.”

My MNSure search. Presuming a 26 year old male in perfect health. Point: Look at the deductibles. 

Also see Lie of the Decade

The Clueless

SCOTUScare ... and it's still NOT Affordable

The 7 Best Lines from Justice Scalia’s Blistering Obamacare Dissent

Excerpt:

"The Act that Congress passed makes tax credits available only on an “Exchange established by the State.” This Court, however, concludes that this limitation would prevent the rest of the Act from working as well as hoped. So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”

Obamacare still faces these big challenges

Excerpt:

As many enrollees are discovering, the “Affordable” Care Act is somewhat misnamed. Healthcare costs continue to rise faster than wages or overall inflation, putting a financial burden even on people who have healthcare. A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund found that 23% of Americans who have healthcare coverage are “underinsured,” meaning their out-of-pocket spending on healthcare is more than 10% of their income in a given year. Deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs have been rising because consumers and businesses have been opting for plans with lower premiums—which usually require the patient to bear more of the cost before 100% coverage kicks in. The irony is that insurance has gotten more affordable, but actual healthcare hasn’t.

Comment: Image source ... modified with. In our post-modern world words no longer convey absolutes

Updated:

• SCOTUS rules; Welcome to Oceania
• key excerpts from Scalia’s dissent
• 'Jiggery-pokery': The best lines from Antonin Scalia's Obamacare dissent
• Roberts Gets It Wrong Again
• The Anti-Constitutional Consequences of King v. Burwell

Chuck Schumer states the obvious: "We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem—health care reform."

Chuck Schumer: Passing Obamacare in 2010 Was a Mistake
Excerpt:

Sen. Chuck Schumer upbraided his own party Tuesday for pushing the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010. While Schumer emphasized during a speech at the National Press Club that he supports the law and that its policies "are and will continue to be positive changes," he argued that the Democrats acted wrongly in using their new mandate after the 2008 election to focus on the issue rather than the economy at the height of a terrible recession. "After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus, but unfortunately Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them," Schumer said. "We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem—health care reform." The third-ranking Senate Democrat noted that just about 5 percent of registered voters in the United States lacked health insurance before the implementation of the law, arguing that to focus on a problem affecting such "a small percentage of the electoral made no political sense." The larger problem, affecting most Americans, he said, was a poor economy resulting from the recession. "When Democrats focused on health care, the average middle-class person thought, 'The Democrats aren't paying enough attention to me,' " Schumer said. The health care law should have come later, Schumer argued, after Democrats had passed legislation to help the middle class weather the recession. Had Democrats pushed economic legislation, he said, "the middle class would have been more receptive to the idea that President Obama wanted to help them" and, in turn, they would have been more receptive to the health care law. Schumer said he told fellow Democrats in the lead-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act that it was the wrong time to pass the law.

Comment: Image source. What was wrong: \

• Sweeping "reform" crammed down the throat of the minority party
• And where is the "affordable" part of the Affordable Care Act?! The act did nothing to slow the inflationary pressure of health care. 
• I'll add to that ... not reading the bill! 
• More

Will SCOTUS ruling on King v. Burwell be "nail in coffin" for Obamacare?

Supreme Court to Hear Case on Health Law Subsidies - Challengers Argue Affordable Care Act Only Permits Tax Credits on State-Run Exchanges
Excerpt:

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review whether consumers can receive subsidies through the Affordable Care Act for insurance purchased through a federal exchange, taking up a key piece of the Obama administration’s health-care law. The move puts before the high court one of several cases over the subsidies. The justices accepted a challenge from Virginia that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., had rejected. The Fourth Circuit in July found in favor of an Internal Revenue Service rule extending tax credits to lower-income Americans who purchase coverage through the federal insurance exchange. Conservative groups, seizing on wording in the Affordable Care Act, have sued, arguing the subsidy is limited to people who buy insurance through state-run exchanges. Federal exchanges are in place in more than 30 states that haven’t established their own exchanges.

Comment: See The real threat to the ACA

A lawsuit known as Halbig v. Burwell has been winding through the courts, and if plaintiffs succeed it could mean the elimination of federal subsidies for as many as 7 million people covered under the program by 2016. It could still take a year or two for the legal maneuvering to play out, and the case could ultimately land at the Supreme Court. The thing to know is that this is a sleeper case with potential ramifications more serious than anything likely to get through Congress during the next two years.

Comment: Image source

Several updates (on 11/8):

• The Supreme Court agrees to hear the federal subsidy case
• Why did the court grant cert in King v. Burwell?
• King v. Burwell is *not* a major constitutional challenge to Obamacare.: "The case now before the court is not making a constitutional claim that Congress doesn’t have the power to pass federal exchange subsidies, but merely that the statute they wrote did not authorize such subsidies ... And the remedy for that claim is very simple. If it truly was the intent of Congress to give the administration the power to provide Obamacare subsidies even in states that did not set up a healthcare exchange, then the Court can simply send the matter back to Congress and have them add whatever authorizations Congress desires to the law."

The end of Obamacare? Subsidies on Federal Exchanges invalidated

Court Deals Blow to Health-Law Subsidies on Federal Exchanges - Ruling Is Major Setback to Implementation of Affordable Care Act

Excerpt:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, on a 2-1 vote, invalidated an Internal Revenue Service regulation that implemented a key piece of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The regulation said subsidies for health insurance were available to qualifying middle- and low-income consumers whether they bought coverage on a state exchange or one run by the federal government. The ruling potentially could cripple the law by making subsidies unavailable in as many as 36 states where the federal government has run some or all of the insurance exchanges. The court sided with challengers, four individuals and three employers, who argued the health law allowed subsidies only for insurance purchases made through state exchanges. The issue became an important one after the law was enacted because more than two-thirds of the states chose not to set up their own exchanges, relying on federally-run exchanges instead. The appeals court's opinion, by Judge Thomas Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee, acknowledged that the decision has "major consequences," but the court said the IRS rule wasn't a permissible interpretation of the health law. Both judges in the majority were appointed by Republican presidents.

Comment: Image source (and these movies used to really scare me!). Perhaps had anyone read the law before they passed it ...!!!

Will companies dump health benefits?

Thanks to Obamacare, more companies are likely to dump health benefits

Excerpt:

S&P predicts that companies will do the math and find it irresistible to move more and more of their workers off company-run plans and into the exchanges established under Obamacare, as the ACA is known. Companies with more than 50 workers will have to pay a penalty if they don’t offer insurance, but it could still be cheaper when factoring in the savings on healthcare; that’s because insurance costs have skyrocketed during the last 20 years, making healthcare one of the costs companies find most difficult to control. The rising and unpredictable nature of healthcare costs led AOL CEO Tim Armstrong to make his unfortunate comment about "distressed babies" earlier this year. Armstrong took a lot of heat and later apologized, but many CEOs expresss similar frustrations (usually privately). Health Benefits Phased Out The migration away from employer-based coverage would probably occur in phases. Companies might start by moving part-timers and new hires off their plans, since they tend to get paid less than other workers and would be more likely to qualify for subsidies under the exchanges. Established employees might be the last to lose employer-based coverage, and companies would still be free to offer healthcare benefits as they choose. Such moves would probably be controversial at first, given that just about everything related to Obamacare is controversial. And most companies will probably be reluctant to make big changes likely to produce negative headlines. “However, once a few notable companies start to depart from their traditional approach to health care benefits, it's likely that a substantial number of firms could quickly follow suit,” S&P Capital predicts. S&P likens this change to the evolution away from defined-benefit pension plans toward employee-managed 401(k) plans and IRAs. It would put more burden on individuals to choose a plan from among dozens that might be offered. Out-of-pocket costs could rise, since employers today essentially subsidize premiums at many companies. Companies could offer stipends meant to cover some or all of the premium for workers who buy coverage on an exchange, just as many companies make contributions to workers’ 401(k) plans. Still, some people undoubtedly would go without insurance, just as many workers who ought to save for retirement don’t.

Comment: Likely!

The Obamacare Train Wreck

Employer Mandate? Never Mind

Excerpts:

And, lo, over eight interim final rules, three final rules, 20 requests for comment, 21 proposed rules, one information collection request, two amendments to the interim final rules, six requests for information and one frequently-asked-questions document, the Administration has created an employer-mandate system that, for example, requires business to track and report every full-time employee's hours of service on a monthly basis.

... Meanwhile, the law stipulates that a full-time workweek for the purposes of the mandate is 30 hours, when general business practice is at least 35. The result is that businesses have been scrambling to insulate themselves from higher labor costs by hiring part-time workers, or splitting shifts, or in some industries like fast food even sharing workers. Small firms trying to expand while avoiding the 50-worker trigger have come to be known as 49ers.

...... ObamaCare has become a rolling "train wreck," in Senator Max Baucus's memorable phrase, and it gets worse the more of it the public sees. The employer mandate is terrible policy, as the law's critics said before it passed. Now the Administration is all but admitting it can't implement it properly, and the task for opponents is to press the concession and begin to delay the rest of the law and dismantle it piece by piece.

Comment: Charles Krauthammer calls Obamacare A Massive Transfer Of Wealth From The Young To The Old

Young people are going to be paying double and triple what [they] would ordinarily be paying in health insurance if the premium were linked to the risk, which is the way that would be for the last 600 years in insurance. But it's not; it's linked to what Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid agreed upon as the risk ratio. So they are going to be doubling and tripling, and the free lunch part of this affair is now over.

Obamacare meets Murphy's law

Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans Under New Law

Excerpt:

Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage.

Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefits—are pitching these low-benefit plans around the country. They cover minimal requirements such as preventive services, but often little more. Some of the plans wouldn't cover surgery, X-rays or prenatal care at all. Others will be paired with limited packages to cover additional services, for instance, $100 a day for a hospital visit.

Federal officials say this type of plan, in concept, would appear to qualify as acceptable minimum coverage under the law, and let most employers avoid an across-the-workforce $2,000-per-worker penalty for firms that offer nothing. Employers could still face other penalties they anticipate would be far less costly.

Comment:  Murphy's law

ObamaCare's madcap dash to ???

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad ObamaCare - The law's implementation is turning into one pratfall after another.
Excerpt:

For sheer political farce, not much can compete with ObamaCare's passage, which included slipping the bill through the Senate before dawn three Christmas eves ago. But the madcap dash to get ready for the entitlement's October 2013 start-up date is a pretty close second.

The size and complexity of the Affordable Care Act meant that its implementation was never going to easy. But behind the scenes, even states that support or might support the Affordable Care Act are frustrated about the Health and Human Services Department's special combination of rigidity and ineptitude.

To take one example, for the better part of a year states and groups like the bipartisan National Governors Association and the National Association of Medicaid Directors have been begging HHS merely for information about how they're required to make ObamaCare work in practice. There was radio silence from Washington, with time running out. Louisiana and other states even took to filing Freedom of Information Act requests, which are still pending.

Now post-election, new regulations are pouring out from HHS—more than 13,000 pages so far and yet nuts-and-bolts questions are still unanswered. Most of what we know so far comes from a 17-page question-and-answer document that HHS divulged this week, though none of the answers have the force of law and HHS says they're subject to change at any moment.

Most Governors Refuse to Set Up Health Exchanges
Excerpt:

The Obama administration said Friday that more than half the states had rejected its pleas to set up their own health insurance exchanges, dealing a setback to President Obama’s hopes that Republicans would join a White House campaign to provide health insurance to all Americans.

But in Virginia, after more than a year of planning and research, Gov. Bob McDonnell said his state would not operate its own exchange. “Despite repeated requests for information, we have not had any clear direction or answers from Washington until recent days,” Mr. McDonnell said.

Comment: I saw someplace (can't find the link) that setting up a health care exchange would be like setting up the New York Stock Exchange.

Obamacare is the law of the land

Boehner: 'Obamacare is the law of the land'

 Excerpt:

Well, I think the election changes that. It's pretty clear that the president was reelected, Obamacare is the law of the land. I think there are parts of the healthcare law that are gonna be very difficult to implement. And very expensive. And as the time when we're tryin' to find a way to create a path toward a balanced budget everything has to be on the table.

Comment: Realism in light of Tuesday's results

Obamacare response ... limit hours

Darden tests limiting worker hours as health-care changes loom
Excerpt:

In an experiment apparently aimed at keeping down the cost of health-care reform, Orlando-based Darden Restaurants has stopped offering full-time schedules to many hourly workers in at least a few Olive Gardens, Red Lobsters and LongHorn Steakhouses. Darden said the test is taking place in "a select number" of restaurants in four markets, including Central Florida, but would not give details. The company said there has been no decision made about expanding it. In an emailed statement, Darden said staffing changes are "just one of the many things we are evaluating to help us address the cost implications health care reform will have on our business. There are still many unanswered questions regarding the health care regulations and we simply do not have enough information to make any decisions at this time." "I think a lot of those employers, especially restaurants, are just going to ensure nobody gets scheduled more than 30 hours a week," said Matthew Snook, partner with human-resources consulting company Mercer. Darden said its goal at the test restaurants is to keep employees at 28 hours a week. Analysts said limiting hours could pose new challenges, including higher turnover and less-qualified workers. "It's a real problem for restaurants," said Howard Penney, a restaurant analyst and managing director for Hedgeye Risk Management. Darden, the world's largest casual-dining company and one of the nation's 30 largest employers, said it offers health insurance to all its approximately 185,000 employees. Many are offered a limited-benefit plan. That type of coverage is being phased out under health-care changes, which will ban annual limits for most plans. About 25 percent of Darden workers are full time, meaning they work more than 30 hours a week. Though employees say Darden already offers traditional health insurance to full-timers, Janney Capital Markets analyst Mark Kalinowski said the cost of providing that could become higher for Darden under the Affordable Care Act. Because that law requires everyone to have health insurance, more workers will likely choose its coverage, Kalinowski said. "Even a modest jump up in the amount of employees that decide they want the insurance you're offering could have a meaningful impact on your bottom line," he said. Under the system Darden is testing, employees are to be scheduled for no more than 28 hours each week. They can run over that if things get busy, but Darden acknowledged they are not supposed to exceed 30 hours. At a new Olive Garden in Stillwater, Okla., former busboy Keaton Hasty said employees were routinely limited to 29 1/2 hours.

Comment: Any surprises?

"your premiums will go down"

President Obama’s claim that insurance premiums ‘will go down’

 Excerpt:

“The other thing we’ve done is to say, what are the critical needs of small business? A lot of time, one of the biggest challenges is to make sure that you, as a sole proprietor, that you can get health insurance for you and your family. So when you hear about the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — and I don’t mind the name because I really do care. That’s why we passed it. You should know that once we have fully implemented, you’re going to be able to buy insurance through a pool so that you can get the same good rates as a group that if you’re an employee at a big company you can get right now — which means your premiums will go down.”

Comment: Detailed analysis of.

The ObamaCare ruling: Four positive things

Chief Justice John Roberts is a Genius!

 Excerpt:

Chief Justice Roberts actually ruled the mandate, relative to the commerce clause, was unconstitutional. That’s how the Democrats got Obama-care through in the first place. His ruling means Congress can’t compel American citizens to purchase anything. Ever. The notion is now officially and forever, unconstitutional. As it should be.

"Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Congress already possesses expansive power to regulate what people do. Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do not do. The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers. The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce.”

Excerpt from ruling (p 12):

Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices

Comments:

• PDF of ruling
• HT: Denny Burk

Here are the four positive things:

1. It's a tax: Roberts correctly called it a tax. Republicans can run on this!
2. Door closed on the use (er ... abuse) of the commerce clause to compel citizens to purchase something!
3. The ball is now in Mitt Romney’s court. The GOP leaders of the Congress have been given a political gift of historic dimensions
4. We are just months away from another quadrennial election. People have a choice and if we (the collective we) are stupid enough to reelect Obama well we deserve what we get!

Preview: ObamaCare before the Supremes

The Supreme Court Weighs ObamaCare

WSJ article - 1st paragraph:

On Monday, the Supreme Court will begin an extraordinary three-day hearing on the constitutionality of ObamaCare. At stake are the Constitution's structural guarantees of individual liberty, which limit governmental power and ensure political accountability by dividing that power between federal and state authorities. Upholding ObamaCare would destroy this dual-sovereignty system, the most distinctive feature of American constitutionalism.

Comment: So much at stake!

"if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house"

Judge uses Obama’s words against him

Excerpt:

In ruling against President Obama‘s health care law, federal Judge Roger Vinson used Mr. Obama‘s own position from the 2008 campaign against him, arguing that there are other ways to tackle health care short of requiring every American to purchase insurance.

“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that ‘if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of the 78-page ruling Monday.

Judge Vinson, a federal judge in the northern district of Florida, struck down the entire health care law as unconstitutional on Monday, though he is allowing the Obama administration to continue to implement and enforce it while the government appeals his ruling.

The footnote was attached to the most critical part of Judge Vinson‘s ruling, in which he said the “principal dispute” in the case was not whether Congress has the power to tackle health care, but whether it has the power to compel the purchase of insurance.

PDF of rulings

Comment: on p. 76!

TSA is no more about airline security than ObamaCare was about affordable health care

Why Air Security is the Issue

Excerpt:

I submit that if we don't beat back the TSA's assault on innocent travelers, we might lose our nation for good. Or perhaps it would mean we have already lost it.

The reality is that the TSA is no more about airline security than ObamaCare was about affordable health care. Both the organization and the bill are about the dehumanization -- and control -- of theoretically free Americans. Thus, it is critical that Americans win push back efforts against both, because if we lose on these two fronts, we have effectively lost most of our freedom.

Now I realize there have been attacks on human freedoms all over our bureaucracy-infected society long before ObamaCare and Janet Incompetano's "grope and change" policies were in place. I submit, however, that if both our medical care and our mobility are controlled by the whims of government bureaucrats -- issues like toys in Happy Meals or sodium- and fat-free restaurants will be irrelevant.

Private property rights -- which are also under attack everywhere from the IRS to the EPA -- include the acquisition of financial resources. One of the great freedoms provided by those resources is the ability to move about. Those who attack one attack the other. Citizens who are self-sufficient and on the go are much harder to control than those who are not.

It is no coincidence that liberalism flourishes in the big cities, where people live in close quarters in a high-rise urban lifestyle. A nation of Seinfelds is easier to keep tabs on than a nation of Palins. As such, the Seinfelds don't even feel the morphing grip of bureaucrats because they rarely do anything or go anywhere that threatens the bureaucratic state's ability to control.

Comment: A serious read to counter the previous post

A more realistic Republican approach to ObamaCare - "Fix It!"

Don't Repeal ObamaCare, 'Fix' It!

Excerpt:

To fix ObamaCare, Congress should first create a non-partisan Commission (HAC, or Healthcare Allocations Commission) staffed with a majority of practicing nurses and doctors, leavened by economists and management experts. This Commission will be tasked with advising the House Ways and Means Committee on which provisions of H.R. 3590 should be funded and which should not.

Next require all Directors tasked with implementing ObamaCare -- there are at least six new agencies -- to submit to the HAC within six months a cost/benefit analysis based on evidence of their Agency, the new regulations, or any other activity embodied in the Healthcare ‘Reform' Bill that will impact patients or our national bottom line.

Each analysis must include hard evidence in two parts: Costs and Patient/National Benefits.

Comment: Interesting approach.

First step of Obamacare to SCOTUS?

Judge to Rule by Year End in Virginia Health-Care Suit

Excerpt:

A federal judge said Monday that he would rule before year's end on whether the health overhaul violates the Constitution, and he seemed sympathetic to the plaintiff's core argument.

In a two-hour hearing here, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson pressed both sides on a case that could reshape the sweeping health law President Barack Obama signed in March. The case, one of 20 filed so far challenging the law, is considered among the most crucial because it is the furthest along of the state-led lawsuits.

Virginia, led by its Republican attorney general, wants the entire law struck down on the grounds that it violates the Constitution by requiring most Americans to carry health insurance or pay a fee. The Obama administration counters that Congress can levy the fee under its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, or under its taxation power.

Judge Hudson's sharp questioning offered some clues as to how he views each side's case. He showed sympathy for the plaintiff's contention that requiring Americans to carry health insurance amounts to regulating "inactivity," and that Congress lacks such a power.

"You collapse federalism and create a national police power," Duncan Getchell, state solicitor general for Virginia, told a packed courtroom.

Allowing such power, Judge Hudson said, could open the door for the federal government to require residents to buy a car, join a gym and "eat asparagus," he said. "It's boundless."

...

Judge Hudson said he expected the case would end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. Most legal experts predict the administration will ultimately prevail, but they don't rule out the opposite outcome. If plaintiffs prevail in the early stages, it could throw a wrench in the law's early implementation.

Comment: Obamacare is a vast overreaching by the Federal government

Boeing on Obamacare: Boing! Boing!

Citing health care law, Boeing pares employee plan

Excerpt:

Aerospace giant Boeing is joining the list of companies that say the new health care law could have a potential downside for their workers.

In a letter mailed to employees late last week, the company cited the overhaul as part of the reason it is asking some 90,000 nonunion workers to pay significantly more for their health plan next year. A copy of the letter was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

"The newly enacted health care reform legislation, while intended to expand access to care for millions of uninsured Americans, is also adding cost pressure as requirements of the new law are phased in over the next several years," wrote Rick Stephens, Boeing's senior vice president for human resources.

Boeing is the latest major employer to signal a shift for its workers as a result of the legislation, which expands coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people and ranks as President Barack Obama's top domestic achievement. Earlier, McDonald's had raised questions about whether a limited benefit plan that serves some 30,000 of its employees would remain viable under the law. That prompted the administration to issue McDonald's a waiver from certain requirements under the law.

Spokeswoman Karen Forte said the Boeing plan is more generous than what its closest competitors offer, and the company was concerned it would get hit with a new tax under the law.

Comment: So much for health care reform!