COVID-19 & Healthcare

The ill-considered lawsuit by the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, is both a reminder of his rank hypocrisy, and the double-standard the media always applies to reporting on the latest GOP manufactured outrage of the day. It is the “Obama Standard.”

In 2005-2006, when Medicare Part D implementation struggled, the Bush/Cheney administration unilaterally extended deadlines and waived penalties – relying on nothing but executive discretion and regulatory authority. (cue the crickets chirping). As Steve Benen reported earlier this year, Where the parallels end | MSNBC:

When the Affordable Care Act’s open-enrollment period got off to a rough start last October, it was easy to note the similarities between its difficulties and those associated with the Bush/Cheney Medicare Part D policy. On Friday, Sam Stein had a terrific report noting just how deep the parallels go.

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[I]t ties into a larger pattern of Republicans embracing something we can call the “Obama standard.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby was not grounded on the First Amendment, as the opinions made clear. It was grounded on a statutory law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U. S. C. §2000bb et seq. which overturned the standard of review in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), which held that the Free Exercise Clause permits the State to prohibit sacramental peyote use, and thus to deny unemployment benefits to persons discharged for such use. The opinion was written by Justice Antonin Scalia.

As Justice Ginsburg explained in Hobby Lobby:

Lacking a tenable claim under the Free Exercise Clause, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga rely on RFRA[.]  . . . In RFRA, Congress “adopt[ed] a statutory rule comparable to the constitutional rule rejected in Smith.” Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, 546 U. S. 418, 424 (2006).

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