The June 28 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act — aka Obamacare — had more to do with government power than with actual healthcare.
In writing the majority opinion of the 5-4 decision, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts said that the Commerce Clause in the Constitution did not give Congress the power to force people to buy health insurance. While that clause grants Congress the power to regulate existing interstate commerce, it can’t force people to engage in commerce, especially commerce that doesn’t yet exist. (There is no interstate commerce in health insurance.)
However, Justice Roberts joined with his four liberal colleagues on the bench in ruling that Congress can penalize, through taxation, people who don’t buy health insurance.
While the Constitution does give Congress the power to levy taxes, in the ruling in favor of the individual mandate to buy insurance, the logic is faulty. What the court was saying is that even though Congress can’t force you to do something, it can punish you if you don’t do it.
Chuck Todd, from MSNBC thinks this is just fine. He likened it to traffic laws in which people are not forced to obey the laws, but can be fined for violating them.
The analogy, like the ruling itself is faulty. In Todd’s case, the situation is more like saying you can’t be forced to buy a car, but can be taxed if you don’t own one.
Republicans are really stuck because of this. One, the chief justice was a George W. Bush appointee to the court. Two, Obamacare itself, with the individual mandate, is modeled on the Massachusetts health care law that was hailed as great by Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president when he was the Bay State‘s governor.
Further, Republicans from John Boehner to Eric Cantor have vowed to repeal Obamacare with a healthcare plan of their own. So far, though, that plan is nothing but vaporware, all talk, no substance. And they do want government involved in healthcare, just so long as they do it.
Even talk of repeal is just talk. It certainly won’t happen this year because there’s no way the Republicans can get a veto-proof vote. The president has vowed to veto any repeal bill should it actually pass.
But power is what this is all about. The bill itself doesn’t provide for healthcare. It doesn’t increase the number of doctors. Nor does it do what should actually be done, which is find ways of lowering the actual cost of medical procedures.
It’s the power of government that’s being promoted here, the power of government to tell people how they must spend their money, the power of getting the federal government further entrenched into the everyday lives of Americans.
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