Obama versus the US Supreme Court

As you know, the US Supreme Court has heard challenges to the Obama health care law, often called by its more cuddly name, "Obamacare."

The Court set aside six hours of hearings over three days, as opposed to the normal one hour normally reserved by the Court. That should give you a sense of the complexity of the case, if not the importance.

You listen to the entire argument as well as read analysis here (New York Times).

The issues:

1) Does the Court have authority to decide the fate of the law in the first place
2) Can Congress require you to buy health insurance (the individual mandate)?
3) If the Court invalidates the individual mandate, can that be severed from the rest of the law or does the whole law become invalid?
4) What about the Medicaid expansion?

The Justices are now deciding these issues in private. The process is unknown to most, but insiders to the Court have written about the process of bargaining between Justices, a process that sounds pretty disgusting to me. Imagine, for example, agreeing to conclude something to please another Justice or to get his or her vote on another case.

Yes, it is entirely up to us.

Thomas Goldstein, a Washington lawyer and publisher of SCOTUSblog.com, recently said: "This case is on a rocket ship. Because there may be as many as four decisions, the justices work collaboratively. The majority opinion writer circulates it for other people to comment, dissenters will circulate their opinions and that process will go back and forth, back and forth until about mid-June, when they will just get down to finalize it."
 
So we will know the fate of this law in June. Predictions are all over the web. I already made the outlandish prediction that the Court will uphold the law, 7-2. But if I were a betting man, I'd go with 5-4 to overturn it.

Clearly, some people love the law. Others, not so much.

Personally, I wonder how many of these people have read the law (virtually none of them) or even know what it does (probably a tiny fraction of them).

Things like:

* Insurance companies cannot hike my rate without approval from an independent panel
* They cannot put a cap of lifetime coverage for a serious condtion
* They cannot refuse me coverage based on preexisting conditions
* They cannot charge women more than men for the same insurance
* They will start offering free preventive health screenings
* Checkups and immunizations are offered for my children for free
* An insurance exchange is created to allow me to buy coverage across state lines to find the best deal for my family

Not to mention, millions of people who do not have insurance will finally get it. The only way to make sure this happens is to require people to buy insurance for those who can afford to buy it. That is, the law requires people who can afford to buy insurance to buy insurance from a private for-profit company based on the premise that it is your responsibility as a citizen to take care of yourself rather than to not buy insurance but continue to use the health care system (e.g., emergency room visits) and force everyone else to pay for your illness or injury.

This is a conservative principle based on conservative ideas going back at least to 1989!

So what is so controversial about this law anyway?

Part of health care law unconstitutional

From Reuters:

An appeals court dealt a blow to President Barack Obama's healthcare law on Friday, leaving a mark on constitutional law, the healthcare industry, U.S. politics and U.S. states.


The court ruled as "unconstitutional" the law's requirement that individuals buy health insurance or pay a fine, but upheld the rest of the law passed by Congress last year. Here is a look at what it means on four fronts:

THE LAW - Almost everyone agrees at least one of the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the sweeping reform law, known as the Affordable Care Act, will ultimately reach the Supreme Court, probably next year. This decision shows one way the highest court may rule, by maintaining the bulk of the reforms, but throwing out the so-called "individual mandate" making healthcare a legal requirement for all Americans.

HEALTHCARE - Throwing out the individual mandate could influence how the healthcare industry approaches the reforms in the law, especially when considering how to price insurance policies. Without the individual mandate, insurance premiums would likely rise. The mandate had guaranteed a large and steady pool of insurance purchasers.

U.S. POLITICS - The ruling will likely embolden conservatives who derisively call the healthcare reforms "Obamacare." Some have attributed the huge Republican gains in the November 2010 congressional elections to voter discontent over the law, Obama's signature piece of domestic policy. The issue is certain to feature in the campaign for the November 2012 presidential election when the president will seek a second term. Should the Supreme Court rule the same as the appeals court, Obama, a Democrat, could try to persuade Congress to pass a "legislative fix" for the individual mandate's structure, but he would face a tough time getting it through a Congress where Democrats no longer hold a majority in both houses as they did when the law passed in March 2010.

THE STATES - Friday's decision was in a lawsuit filed by 26 of the 50 states, which are charged with carrying out a bulk of the healthcare reforms. Along with worrying about the costs of implementation, the states say the law usurps their rights. Earlier this year, states that had criticized the law, such as Missouri, adopted an attitude of "if you can't beat them, join them." They began setting up state-run exchanges for health insurance and moving ahead on implementation in the hopes of influencing the reforms and limiting the reach of the law. But of late, they have taken a harder line, with Kansas recently sending back to the federal government a grant it had received to create an exchange. This ruling, at a level just below the Supreme Court, could cause them to further resist carrying out the law.

*** My take: This ruling means little. The only part of the law the Court found unconstitutional was the part about making people pay if they do not carry insurance. If it issue ever makes the US Supreme Court, the Court will disagree. Yes, even that Court.

You know why, because they are pro-business. And the law is pro-business (it requires that you purchase insurance from for-profit companies). Nothing socialist about that.

By the way, know where Obama got the idea to require people to buy insurance or face a fine? Mitt Romney! (Republican candidate for President)

Tell that to the "Tea Party" people.