How ironic is it that progressives are now in the position of crossing our fingers in hope that the Supreme Court upholds President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act, specifically the part that mandates that everyone in the country buy health insurance.
It's ironic because not a single one of us wanted mandates to be included in the original healthcare bill. All that meant to us was that insurance companies would not only still be in total control of America's healthcare system, but they'd enrich their coffers even more by forcing people and employers to purchase their product, whether we wanted to or not.
Mandates were and are a Republican idea that was first promoted at the behest of the insurance industry when they realized that healthcare reform was on the horizon and they might lose some of their grip on the throat of the healthcare system.
In his 2008 campaign, then-candidate Obama assured us that he thought that mandates were a bad idea, and he framed it as a tangible difference between him and his Democratic primary opponents as well as between him and Senator McCain when they both became their party's candidates in the general election.
Fast forward to 2009 and a newly elected President Obama who bravely decides to tackle healthcare reform in the beginning of his administration when his popularity is high and his party's in power. Unfortunately for us progressives, while the newly elected president is determined to pass healthcare reform, he's even more determined to do it with bi-partisan, we're-all-in-this together legislation. This means reversing himself on some of his campaign promises, and watering down the reform part of healthcare reform in order to get Republican votes.
In fairness to the president, he not only had to deal with a Republican party that was determined to vote against any proposal he made even if it was a bill declaring that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, he also had to deal with members of his own party who were just as deep in the pockets of the insurance industry as their Republican colleagues. As a result, single-payer healthcare was off the table before the discussion even started and the public option that the majority of the country signaled they wanted, was thrown under the bus so many times during negotiations that by the time it was killed off for good, it had tire tracks on it deeper than the Grand Canyon. Suddenly, the mandates that candidate Obama said he couldn't support became an essential part of President Obama's healthcare reform plan. After all, how could Republicans object, it had been their idea in the first place.
Well, there isn't enough space in anyone's diary to tackle the hypocrisy, dishonesty, lack of integrity and sheer malevolence that has become synonymous with the modern Republican Party, but needless to say not a single Republican senator and only one Republican congressman voted for the final version of Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act. Even more remarkable, progressives like me found ourselves rooting for the passage of a bill that only marginally achieved what we hoped it would, failed to reign in the escalating costs of healthcare and left the insurance companies firmly at the helm, still raking in the bucks.
To no one's surprise, Republican Attorneys General, and a couple of Republican Governors in 28 states have sued the Obama administration on the constitutionality of implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act, and we now find ourselves awaiting its fate in the Supreme Court. By all accounts, todays questions in the Court seem to indicate that the conservative justices are probably going to vote to overturn at least the mandate part of Obama's healthcare reform bill, and we are greeting the news in direct reversal of where each side stood when the healthcare debate first started.
Republicans are praying (literally) for it to be overturned and progressives are marching in support of keeping it intact. That's because the merits of both healthcare reform and the bill President Obama signed to accomplish it have now been lost in the bare-knuckles fight between Republicans who make no secret of their desire to destroy Obama, and Democrats who want to protect him, even at the cost of our ideals.
Such is the state of politics in this country. Real, thoughtful policy that would make all of our lives better is impossible to achieve. Fear, hate and distrust rule our public discourse, and deeply entrenched partisanship insures that we end up defending positions that are in direct opposition to what we actually believe.