The bare majority of the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare on grounds that stretch their imagination. The core of their decision allowing the individual mandate to buy insurance is that what is clearly written in the law as a penalty, argued to be allowed as justified under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, they choose to instead treat as a tax within Congress’ authority. Opinion writer Chief Justice Roberts said, “The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one.” WTF! As said at National Review,
Chief John Roberts may have flinched from doing what his fellow Republican-appointed justices were willing to do — strike down the individual mandate as a violation of the Commerce Clause — but he did so in a clever way. He resurrected an earlier argument, one the Obama administration had mostly abandoned, that the mandate was really a tax rather than a regulation.... the only way the administration prevailed was to have Obama’s main legislative accomplishment redefined as one of the largest middle-class tax increases in the history of the country.
Supporters of the decision say, "The decision vindicates Obama and congressional Democrats, who maintained throughout the legal challenge that even this court, with its conservative majority, would have to break with decades of precedent to overturn the healthcare law." Others, like the Democratic National Committee, just get their vulgar on.
The Supreme Court commentator at SCOTUS blog says, “The ACA’s key provision now amounts to an invitation to buy insurance, rather than an order to do so, with a not-very-big tax penalty for going without.” However, it is also within the power of future Congresses to increase the tax to where failing to buy insurance will not be a reasonable choice, thus a practically unavoidable mandate.
It is good that the majority refused to broaden the Commerce Clause, which would allow unrestricted expansions of federal controls over all we do. However, the majority still opened Pandora’s Box via another lockpicking.
This being decided, the lack of a severability clause in the law is moot.
In the third area of contention, the Court’s majority did scale back the Medicaid portion of Obamacare to disallow coercive federal withholding of funds to the states for their present Medicaid programs, but does allow the huge increase in qualification for Medicaid to proceed.
The other portions of Obamacare, including the latest affront to religious conscience, were not at issue in today’s decisions, but are expected to come up through the lower courts.
Supporters of Obamacare cannot be anything but elated. Opponents must be discouraged, even with the elements of the decisions that uphold principles while avoiding their application.
For those opponents who rally behind a Republican majority in Congress and President for 2013, the core problem is that it is not to be expected that there will be 60 Republicans in the Senate to repeal Obamacare.
We're just about screwed....unless Senator McConnell has some parliamentary tricks up his sleeve. McConnell says, ""The court's ruling doesn't mark the end of the debate. It marks a fresh start on the road to repeal." Let's hope so.
Tracked: Jun 28, 13:02