Visual source: Newseum
The Supreme Court's consideration of President Obama's signature legislative achievement took center stage this week, and this Friday, pundits are still assessing the oral arguments and "what if" scenarios. From The Nation's David Cole:
As Mark Twain might say, reports of Obamacare's demise are greatly exaggerated. While the conservative justices expressed considerable reservations about the law's scope, Justice Kennedy, the key swing vote, also noted, near the very end of the argument, that the unique context of the healthcare market may be sufficient to validate the "individual mandate." The biggest challenge the government has faced in defending the law has been the articulation of a limiting principle, and by argument's end it seemed that Justice Kennedy might have heard one that he could sign on to. If he does vote to uphold the law, it's possible that Chief Justice Roberts will join him, in the interest of not having the case decided by a single vote, in which case the vote would be 6-3.
Doyle McManus at
The Los Angeles Times thinks the healthcare plan's terminology was wrong:
At the Supreme Court this week, both sides basically agreed that the Constitution allows the federal government to enact a national health insurance plan — even a government-run single-payer plan. (That, after all, is pretty much what Medicare is.) And both sides agreed that the Constitution allows the government to levy taxes to help pay for that health insurance. (We all pay a Medicare tax.)
But that's not how Obama and the Democrats wrote their healthcare law. Instead, to avoid the stigma of the word "tax," they included a requirement that everyone obtain health insurance or pay a penalty.
It turns out that was a big mistake. As we now know, there's one thing Americans hate even more than taxes, and that's being ordered around by their government.
What happens if the Court strikes down the health care law in full?
Conor Friedersdorf at
The Atlantic thinks it would still be a political liability for the GOP:
It sure seems possible that health care would emerge as one of the biggest issues in campaign 2012, and President Obama would be able to best Mitt Romney, who is so twisted around in pretzels on the subject that nearly anything he says can be attacked as hypocritical. And there would remain the general failure of the GOP to articulate a health-care agenda that voters like (besides the prescription drug benefit and promising not to cut Medicare).
None of this is to say that they shouldn't fight the law. If it results in a precedent that puts a hard limit on the federal government's power, reversing the absurd, tyrannical decision in Wickard v. Filburn (the state should not be able to prevent you from growing food on your farm) and the egregiously intrusive decision in Gonzales v. Raich (growing medical marijuana for your own use is not interstate commerce, and is more properly governed by state law), it'll be a victory for ... well, for libertarians, and conservatives will feel good about it too, until the precedent thwarts some future excess of theirs. In any case, health care sure seems like a political loser for the GOP.
And that isn't likely to change.
Dan Balz at
The Washington Post generally agrees with the idea that it won't be a win-win for the GOP if the Court strikes down the law:
Such a ruling would be a major win for opponents of the federal statute. But it could come with complications. First, a party that has built its health-care message on the phrase “repeal and replace” would immediately come under pressure to reach consensus on how to reform the health-care system. Second, Republicans, who benefited from a sizable enthusiasm gap in the 2010 midterm elections, could face a Democratic opposition deeply angered and newly motivated by its setback in the high court.
Republican pollster Whit Ayres summed up the political consequences of the court overturning Obama’s law in part or in whole: “If the court strikes down just the individual mandate but leaves the rest of an increasingly unstable and unworkable structure, then the GOP has an ‘I told you so’ moment and an even greater argument for repeal. If the court strikes down the whole law, then the GOP has a huge ‘I told you so moment,’ but loses one of several large targets for the fall campaign. There are plenty of other targets remaining (jobs, stimulus, fiscal irresponsibility), but it loses a big one.”
Eugene Robinson, meanwhile, looks at the practical effects if the law gets struck down:
The immediate impact will be the human toll. More than 30 million uninsured Americans who would have obtained coverage under Obamacare will be bereft. Other provisions of the law, such as forbidding insurance companies to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions and allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ policies, presumably would also be invalidated; if not, they would have to be modified to keep insurance rates from climbing sharply. The United States would remain the only wealthy industrialized country where getting sick can mean going bankrupt.
Eventually, however, our health-care system will be restructured. It has to be. The current fee-for-service paradigm, with doctors and hospitals being paid through for-profit insurance companies, is needlessly inefficient and ruinously expensive. [...] Our only choice is to try to hold the costs down. President Obama tried to make a start with a modest approach that works through the current system. If this doesn’t pass constitutional muster, the obvious alternative is to emulate other industrialized nations that deliver equal or better health-care outcomes for half the cost.
I’m talking about a single-payer health-care system. If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, a single-payer system will go from being politically impossible to being, in the long run, fiscally inevitable.
Meanwhile,
The Mercury News Editorial Board foresees another Supreme Court battle:
The new laws in several states that require women to undergo medically unnecessary ultrasounds before getting an abortion now have opposing court rulings behind them -- one federal appeals court earlier in Texas upheld the requirement, while one state judge in Oklahoma this week struck it down because it constitutes government intrusion into medical ethics.
This issue needs to go to the Supreme Court, and fast. We can't wait to hear conservative and presumably anti-abortion justices grapple with government orders for useless and costly medical procedures for the purpose of bullying women.[...]
It's hard to escape the conclusion that respect for women is on the wane in some political circles and state legislatures. Elections can change that dynamic, if women get involved and if candidates for office are willing to take the matter up on the campaign trail.
On a final note, if you haven't read about Senator Bob Menendez's (D-J) bill to end oil company tax breaks,
The Star-Ledge Editorial Board sums up the dynamic:
Big Oil is pretty darn slick. The companies racking up the highest profits recently launched an advertising blitz to convince us they still need billions of our tax dollars, even as they benefit from our pain at the pump.
They’re spending multimillions on this campaign, along with making political donations. But it’s well worth it to them. Because when it comes to the tax breaks and subsidies they get, we’re talking billions — $4 billion a year, to be exact. That’s more than $7,000 a minute. They know how impossible that is to justify. [...]
The senator is trying to revoke $2 billion in tax breaks to the five largest, most profitable oil companies. Instead, he wants to use our tax dollars for something better: reducing the budget deficit and funding alternative energy that will ultimately make us less dependent on oil.
