Another legal challenge to Obamacare

One of the key features of the highly complicated Affordable Care Act is the subsidy that is given to lower income people to enable them to afford to purchase health insurance. These subsidies are provided through both the state exchanges for those states that set them up and through the federal exchanges in those states that decided that they wanted to have no part of the ACA or decided to let the federal government set them up. So far, 16 states have set up their own exchanges and 34 exchanges are run by the Department of Health and Human Services. The subsidies come in the form of tax credits provided by the IRS.
[Read more…]

Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties case arguments

Lyle Denniston has a summary of the oral arguments in today’s contraceptive case and you can also read the transcript here. Denniston seems to have the sense (shared by several other reports I read) that the day did not go well for the government’s case, despite the spirited question by the three women justices of the lawyers for the companies. It will be quite telling if a 6-3 verdict splits along gender lines.
[Read more…]

Fathers do not have the right to be present at the birth of their child

My older daughter was born in Sri Lanka. It was not the practice at that time there for fathers to be present in the delivery room and so I was not there when she was born but saw her soon after when she and her mother were back in their room. My younger daughter was born four years later in the US and this time I was present at the delivery.
[Read more…]