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?
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