A few things about the SCOTUS decision on the Affordable Care Act

I have to admit that I was surprised at the voting, but I shouldn’t have been.  I know that there was opposition to what was essentially a Republican idea just because a Democrat got it passed, so I understood why people were against it.  But this law supports private insurance companies over everything else so I expected it to be upheld because it matched the interests of corporate power.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised that the law was upheld or by some of the voting.

I think that Roberts’ opinion is a little convoluted but does match the intent of the law – which Congress was too chickenshit to explicitly spell out.  I also think that the minority opinion was ridiculous on at least two points.  For one thing, it stated that there were two key provisions that, had they been left out, the law never would have been passed so if they were struck down then the entire law must be struck down.  Great mind reading act there to begin with, but that’s like saying because I changed my shirt I have to take off all of my other clothes.

The other thing was to say that this law prevents Congress from attacking the health care issues the country faces in the future except in piecemeal fashion because this law gets in the way.  Politically that may have some truth to it – legally it’s just nonsense.  All the next law has to say is that it overturns all of this law.

This decision is mostly a good thing, even if the law itself didn’t go far enough.  It doesn’t foster socialism and never has.  The mandate doesn’t cost anyone anything unless they voluntarily comply because the law specifies that there will be no enforcement of the penalty.  And this law has already helped people, will continue to do so and will help more people in the future.

I still think we need to make this better.

Now, even though the law specifically says that the penalty can not be enforced, how long will it be before we see the campaign commercials about this being a new tax?