Al68 said:
The administration is (now) specifically claiming in court that the law contains no requirement to buy insurance, and contains no "penalty" at all, but merely a tax hike on selected people.
What are
you talking about?
The obamacare mandate contains two separate sections:
First, Section 1501(a) of the "Affordability" (lol) Act imposes a
statutory (read:
legal, codified in the USC, with the same weight of law as any other statutory requirement at the federal or local level) requirement on
all Americans to maintain health acceptable health insurance coverage.
No one, including the Administration, is arguing otherwise. This is
fact.
Second, Section 1501(b) imposes a financial penalty on those who fail to comply with (a). Congress had no interest in seeing these cases decided in the courts, because this would be slow, expensive, and public, so they applied the penalty as an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code. The penalty is a
tax, but the mandate is a
law.
However, this does not change the fact: the tax is only imposed after someone breaks the
law, in this case section 1501(a). Ergo, as a matter of fact (upheld by every court that's heard this case, regardless of the direction in which they ruled) it is a
legal penalty and inexorably tied to the Commerce Clause - tax and spend authority is not sufficient to defend the mandate in sum.
And the subject of this thread is whether or not that "individual mandate" is a valid legally enacted law. The judge referred to ruled that it is not a valid law.
Au contraire. The judge ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional, but considering that enforcement does not begin until 2014, and given the governments inevitable appeal and the lack of any injunction against the Act's implementation in the mean time, the practical consequence is nil.
The judge himself said as much in denying to issue an injunction. This case is still very much open, and the law is still on the books.