Politics

Justice Scalia scolds Obama solicitor general [AUDIO]

Nicholas Ballasy Senior Video Reporter
Font Size:

While Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. made the Obama administration’s case for the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the health care law Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia interrupted and lectured Verrilli about American consumers, saying “These people [are] not stupid.”

Justice Elena Kagan, a former solicitor general appointed by President Obama to the high court, sided with Verrilli in arguing that young people should be required by the federal government to purchase health insurance because others will subsidize their health care in the future.

Scalia shot back, arguing that young people will make the decision to buy health insurance eventually and do not need to be forced by the federal government to engage in commerce.

The transcript of the exchange is below:

GENERAL VERRILLI: To live in the modern world, everybody needs a telephone. And the — the same thing with respect to the — you know, the dairy price supports that — that the Court upheld in Wrightwood Dairy and Rock Royal. You can look at those as disadvantageous contracts, as forced transfers, that — you know, I suppose it’s theoretically true that you could raise your kids without milk, but the reality is you’ve got to go to the store and buy milk. And the commerce power — as a result of the exercise of the commerce power, you’re subsidizing somebody else —

JUSTICE KAGAN: And this is especially true, isn’t it, General —

GENERAL VERRILLI: — because that’s the judgment Congress has made.

JUSTICE KAGAN: — Verrilli, because in this context, the subsidizers eventually become the subsidized?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, that was the point I was trying to make, Justice Kagan, that you’re young and healthy one day, but you don’t stay that way, and the system works over time. And so I just don’t think it’s a fair characterization of it. And it does get back to, I think, a problem I think is important to understand —

JUSTICE SCALIA: These people not stupid. They’re going to buy insurance later. They’re young and need the money now.

GENERAL VERRILLI: But that’s —

JUSTICE SCALIA: When they think they have a substantial risk of incurring high medical bills, they’ll buy insurance, like the rest of us.

GENERAL VERRILLI: But that’s — that’s —

JUSTICE SCALIA: — I don’t know why you think that they’re never going to buy it.

GENERAL VERRILLI: That’s the problem, Justice Scalia. That’s — and that’s exactly the experience that the States had that made the imposition of guaranteed issue and community rating not only be ineffectual but be highly counterproductive. Rates, for example, in New Jersey doubled or tripled, went from 180,000 people covered in this market down to 80,000 people covered in this market. In Kentucky, virtually every insurer left the market.

And the reason for that is because when people have that guarantee of — that they can get insurance, they’re going to make that calculation that they won’t get it until they’re sick and they need it. And so, the pool of people in the insurance market gets smaller and smaller. The rates you have to charge to cover them get higher and higher. It helps fewer and fewer — insurance covers fewer and fewer people until the system ends.

This is not a situation in which you’re conscripting — you’re forcing insurance companies to cover very large numbers of unhealthy people —

JUSTICE SCALIA: You could solve that problem by simply not requiring the insurance company to sell it to somebody who has a — a condition that is going to require medical treatment, or at least not — not require them to sell it to him at a rate that he sells it to healthy people. But you don’t want to do that.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this story relied on a preliminary transcript, published by the Supreme Court, which described Justice Scalia telling Solicitor General Donald Verrilli “We’re not stupid.” Several other media outlets also relied on that early transcript in their reporting. A final corrected transcript on the Supreme Court’s website, however, now indicates that he was talking about U.S. health care consumers, saying “These people [are] not stupid.”

Follow Nicholas on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel