He had been camping out in advance of the court’s decision on President Obama’s health care law, which was upheld Thursday in a sharply divided 5 4 decision, with Chief Justice John G.

He rejected the Obama administration’s primary argument that the mandate to purchase health insurance or pay a fine was constitutional under Congress’ authority to regulate commerce.

The justices also preserved, with some changes, a provision of the law expanding the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor.

Instead of a 5 4 decision on habitual partisan lines, Chief Justice John Roberts joined Kennedy and the court’s liberal justices (minus Justice Elena Kagan, who recused herself) in a 5 3 decision that gave added authority to Kennedy’s solid reasoning.

Saving its perhaps most controversial case for last, the court voted 5 4 to uphold President Obama’s health care law on the last day of its term.

“”We will continue to implement this law and we’ll work together to improve on it,” said Obama, speaking somberly in the White House East Room, the same setting he used to announce the 2011 death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.”.

With today’s announcement, it’s time for us to move forward,” Obama added.Romney, who pushed through a similar healthcare overhaul at the state level in 2006 as governor of Massachusetts but opposed Obama’s law, called on voters to help him defeat the president in order to repeal the law critics derisively call “Obamacare.

Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, was instrumental in helping to pass health care reform in Congress, and was at President Obama’s side when he signed it into law.

Anyone who thinks Roberts is the next Blackmun, O’Connor or Souter is mistaken, we think,” Dorf says.. This week’s rulings aside, Roberts has sided overwhelmingly with the court’s conservatives — Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito against the more liberal wing, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. But, as in the cases this week, he has also shown an occasional willingness to cross over the ideological divide.. “we understand why conservatives are going to criticize him, but we think they’re only thinking about what happened today and not looking at the bigger picture,” said Steve Wermiel, a fellow at American University’s Washington College of Law.. Roberts has sought to try to bring more consensus to the court divided during the years of his predecessor, Chief Justice William Rehnquist — a court that saw numerous 5 4 decisions that split along right left sides of the bench, says Wermiel.. “From the moment he took his seat, Roberts has said he hoped the Supreme Court would do a better job of reaching consensus,” Wermiel says. “He’s sincerely wanted to do that, but it hasn’t always been possible.

It creates a debilitated, inoperable version of healthcare regulation that Congress did not enact and the public does not expect.

“‘CHARACTERIZED AS A TAX’Opponents said the individual mandate was an overreach by the federal government and that Congress had exceeded its powers. The court was deeply divided on this issue, but the majority ruled that Congress’s taxing authority allowed the mandate.The law’s “requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Roberts wrote for the court’s majority.”.

Drawing laughs from the packed courtroom, Ginsburg warned that the dismissal of the individual mandate as unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause “invites assaults on Congress” when it writes future laws.

Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness,” Roberts wrote.In another part of the decision, the court said Congress went too far in a part of the law that requires states to expand the government’s Medicaid health insurance program for the poor with the goal of covering more of the uninsured.The court said this problem can be fixed by precluding the federal government from stripping states of existing Medicaid funds if they did not comply with the expansion, and that this did not require striking down other parts of the law.DRAMATIC DAY AT COURTThe court began its session much as it always does. At 10 a.m. sharp, the marshal’s familiar cry of “Oyez.

IT IS NOT OUR JOB TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR POLITICAL CHOICES” __________________________________________________. P.S. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES — WE NEED TERM LIMITS!!! THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO LIVE OFF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WITH SALARIES, BENEFITS AND LARGE PERKS “FOR LIFE”.. Justice Ginsburg is one of, if not THE, finest minds on the Court today. She has always been a phenomenal scholar and justice. She is an immense asset to the people of America.. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS SAID IN THE SUPREME COURT RULING …”.

What the court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution,” Romney said. “What they did not do is say that Obamacare is good law, or good policy.

A women holds a sign while protesting the administration’s health care law in front of the Supreme Court in Washington.

“About 56 percent of Americans said they opposed the law in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday. When asked about its individual provisions, however, most respondents said they strongly supported them, except for the individual mandate, which was opposed by 61 percent of those surveyed.Most respondents in the survey favored banning insurers from denying coverage to people with pre existing conditions; letting young adults stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26; and making companies with more than 50 workers offer insurance to their employees. All are parts of the law.So are the creation of state based exchanges to offer health insurance; insurance premium assistance to poor people; and insurance tax credits for those just above the poverty line.Jamie Thompson of Harleysville, Pennsylvania, who has a daughter with cystic fibrosis, welcomed the ruling.”.

We haven’t gotten to the end of the line, but we’ve been told it’s not uncommon for cystic fibrosis kids to discover they’ve used up their lifetime benefit from healthcare,” he said. “It means she will have healthcare when she needs it.

“House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, said, “Today’s ruling underscores the urgency of repealing this harmful law in its entirety.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D Calif.) relays the news to her staff that the US Supreme Court just upheld the individual mandate, the central component of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.

Shares of hospital chains jumped, while large health insurer stocks fell after the ruling.

Widening the pool of paying patients stands to benefit hospitals, which are often left to cover the high medical bills of the sick who have no coverage.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan, Donna Smith, Deborah Charles, Thomas Ferraro, Jeff Mason, Alister Bull and Laura MacInnis in Washington with Lewis Krauskopf in New York and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Writing by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Howard Goller and Will Dunham).

Byron Stough is a business journalist based in San Francisco, California. Byron has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Byron spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.