Supreme Court Upholds PPACA!

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Obamacare.

Chief Justice John Roberts provided the fifth and decisive vote to uphold almost all provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including the pivotal individual mandate. And he penned the majority decision! And now, Fox News can't stop showing stock footage of Roberts walking down the Supreme Court steps with Justice Kagan. Mon dieu!

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I wandered into the conservative opinionsphere after the court delivered its decision and was not surprised to find that they had shifted into "Obama lied about taxes" mode. I came across this blog post by an aspiring sixteen-year old conservative blogger decrying the coming tax increase. She, like many other conservatives, recognized that the court's decision, while abhorrent to her, was the right one, a heartening admission. But, she, like so many other talking point-fixated ideologues, misses the forest for the trees.

This is what I posted in her comments in full:

“No one should be forced to buy anything, and they certainly should not be forced to pay for someone else’s health insurance.”

In principle, you and I agree. Government should not be empowered to compel people to undertake commerce that would not otherwise engage in. However, under the pre-Obamacare system, American taxpayers in large part pay for the care received by those who currently do not have health insurance. Tax money does pay for uninsured people to use publicly funded clinics and hospitals everyday. The uninsured also drive up the cost of health insurance premiums, as the insured subsidize the care of the uninsured.

The individual mandate is a fundamentally conservative construct; it impels people to take personal responsibility for their own health. Indeed, Fox News reports today (link at the bottom) that the idea for the individual mandate was conceived by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 1989 and advanced as an alternative to President Clinton’s health care reform legislation by Republicans in 1993. Several Republican Senators and the current Republican presidential nominee have supported legislation like this in the recent past.

As to your assertion that taxes are going to fly; that is a disingenuous claim. For the majority of Americans, Obamacare taking effect means no such tax increase. A tax penalty will only be levied on those who elect to forego the purchase of health insurance when the law is fully implemented in 2014.

So it turns out that after a year of legislative wrangling and a year and a half of legal challenges, that Democrats were fighting for a Republican idea all along? Forget about Roberts being a stealth liberal, the Democrats have a stealth Republican agenda!

More soon!