Amy Howe's Explanation from SCOTUS blog in plain english

[TomClash]

"In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding."

[HopeHoops]

1. Thanks. I've sort of pieced that together, but this is the best description yet.

[jsmirman]

3. That's kind of what they do

over there (at SCOTUSblog)

[slackmaster]

2. Yes, that's pretty clear

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. I have increasingly noticed that the "Democratic" justices are just as mindlessly partisan as the

RW assholes on the court.

In this case, they mindlessly voted in favor of a Kelo-like decision to compel Americans to purchase a private good -- one which has nothing to do with improving the health care system and everything to do with making private insurance (as a commodified good) a requirement of citizenship -- indeed, making it a requirement of breathing -- on Hillary Clinton's theory that "uninsured deadbeats" are responsible for weighing down the health care system and driving up premiums by using hospital services.

WHICH IS A CORE TENET RIGHT WING THEORY OF HEALTH CARE.

But the Dems on the high court voted one way because of which President voted for the bill -- the President who said that a mandate was like forcing homeless people to buy a house.

Which is the next step. Philly just passed a law making it illegal to feed the homeless.