So a lot of people are reading “the individual mandate is in huge trouble, and thus the ACA, and thus Obama himself” into the proceedings at the Supreme Court today. It seems so hard to say, because depending entirely on who you read, pundits are alternately panicking, gloating, or pointing out ways in which Obama could turn a victory for the ACA’s opponents against them in the Presidential election.
What do you all think?
It will be great news for the McCain campaign?
There are reasonable arguments on both sides, and folks will cling to the ones that make them feel like their side is winning. Republicans will claim that it shows that Obama is a failure and intent on thwarting the Constitution. Democrats will claim that it removes the most potent issue of attack that the GOP has going in to the election. Someone (me, I guess) will point out that Obama himself didn’t really care much for the individual mandate until the insurance companies demanded he put it in.
By and large, the electorate will yawn and go back to bitching about gas prices and the economy.
If the USSC kills the health care act, the Republicans lose the ability to get voters to the polls to kill the health care act.
A lot depends on whether the mandate is deemed severable or not. But I expect the general course to be something like this…
Immediate effects: The decision calls attention to individual mandate, which is unpopular. Also, vague “loss” for Obama plus perception of illegal action lead low information voters to take a temporary dip in support. Obama takes a 3-5 point hit in the polls from June - August.
Medium-term effects: Repeal of Obamacare no longer animating force for GOP. By November, the short-term effects of the decision have largely worn off. If the mandate is not severed, Obama can now campaign on finding ways to re-institute the wildly popular parts of the law, like coverage for pre-existing conditions, while pointing to the tragic loss of cost savings that were already starting to materialize. Obama gets a .5-1 point bonus on election day.
Long-term effects: Democrats get health care back as an issue to use against Republicans, and one that becomes increasingly powerful as things get worse. Eventually Congress is forced to adopt an identical policy using the tax power that no one doubts (I mean, my god, Congress “mandates” that you have kids using the tax power right now), or passes single-payer.
Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves, here, by assuming that they’ll strike it down? In order to find it unconstitutional, they’d have to find a reason why it isn’t, and last I heard, nobody has yet been able to do so.
I hope you’re joking about that. If not, carefully read through the Constitution and report back when you find ANYTHING in there that allows Congress to force anybody to buy anything.
Because unless such a clause exists, the healthcare law is by definition unconstitutional.
I only tonight learned that individual purchase mandates were part
of Republican legislation introduced back in Bill Clinton’s day:
GOP Health Care Flipflop 1993-2012
Of course well before then quite a lot of Republican sons were having
babies with their own mothers, enough babies to constitute a new, weighty
faction of the GOP, namely the Tea Baggers. And those Tea Baggers would
rather eat shit and die than work together for any national purpose except
defence.
Gee, you obviously know so much about the Constitution you must be right.
I wonder what those silly Republicans were thinking back in 1993?
And I wonder how it is that the Constitution allows the government to force
corporations (which the constitution says are legally persons) to buy unemployment
insurance? Yeah, I know they call the premiums a “tax”, but the present
administration has chosen not to be dodgy with the terms.
Meanwhile, you can carefully read through the ACA and report back when you find ANYTHING in there that forces anyone to buy anything. The version I have doesn’t force anyone; it just gives people a choice of paying the government more money (which is authorized in the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8).
True…but we still need to do our best to stop the next Obama power grab 
!
Unchecked, he might spend even more money on national public infrastructure! :eek: Yes, yes he would, we know how his devious, evil mind works now!
Plus we need a Pres that isn’t going to waste his time on legislation that is clearly unconstitutional while the economy is going to hell.
There’s no beating around the bush, Obama has staked nearly his entire presidency - or certainly the first half of it - on the legitimacy of his health care reform bill, and if the USSC nullifies the law (which is now a very likely possiblity it seems) it would SEVERELY undermine the rest of his agenda. There are a ton of frightening outcomes of taking out the ACA too.
I mean, (1) it basically would eliminate the possibility that universal health care will ever come to the US (at least in the foreseeable future). (2) It would put us right back where we started from and INVALIDATE the entire two years spent writing and passing the bill in the first place. (3) In the absence of a passed HCRB and in the wake of a negative USSC outcome, Congress will not be able to address this issue again for another GENERATION or two; today’s lawmakers are far too partisan, and I guarantee you that no politician will even touch health care (even Obama if he gets a second term) for the next few decades. (4) Perhaps most importantly, invalidating the ACA will put this country in a situation where essentially the ONLY solution to our HC crisis will be for us to adopt a single-payer system because the private alternative would’ve been deemed unconstitutional. The problem with that last scenario, though, is that there is no movement on the single-payer front, and Congress members today are much too terrified to embrace such an idea anyway; in the meantime, the problem would only get worse, and I highly doubt that they would coalesce around that solution to begin with.
If it goes down, no Congress will ever take it up again. It will become the third rail of politics. Obama spent all of his first term political capital on this and his second term will not be with a Congress nearly as inclined to lift a finger. Democrats saw that it cost them the Speakership in 2010, they are not going to let this issue burn them again. Republicans will not do a thing about health care, mostly because they honestly don’t give two shits about it.
As far as 2012 goes, it deflates the fixation on killing Obamacare. It also erases the base Republican knuckle-draggers’ biggest concern about Romney. So it’s a wash. Republicans were due to give the House back anyway, this will make it harder to hang on. It also makes it harder for the Democrats to lose the Senate, however hard they try.
Mitt Romney was on the Tonight Show last night–an event most of the media covered in its typical celebrity-obsessed style. But there was one health-care relevant exchange (video) that caught the attention of the indispensible Greg Sargent at the Washington Post (bolding mine):
[QUOTE=Tonight Show with Jay Leno]
LENO: So you would make the law stand for children and people with preexisting conditions.
ROMNEY: People with preexisting conditions — as long as they’ve been insured before, they’re going to continue to have insurance.
LENO: Suppose they were never insured?
ROMNEY: Well, if they’re 45 years old, and they show up, and they say, I want insurance, because I’ve got a heart disease, it’s like, `Hey guys, we can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you’re well, and if you get ill, then you’re going to be covered.’
[/quote]
The bolded part is exactly the problem the individual mandate was designed to address. This is the logic that made Romney include an individual mandate in the Massachusetts law.
To me, this exchange shows that the GOP is actually very weak on this issue. They are quite happy to attack “Obamacare” because it damages Obama, but if they have to deal with the specifics of the law, they end up stumbling to the point that Romney indirectly makes the case in favor of an individual mandate. If SCOTUS invalidates the law that gives Republicans one less target for the general election, and if they throw out only the mandate they’re going to have to get into the details of what remains, which will be a loser for them.
If the Supreme Court rules as they hope, can’t they follow up by saying (a) that’s exactly why other states should do what Massachusetts did, sure as (b) the federal government has to follow the Constitution, something something Romney understood why Governors should be taking point on this, something something Obama sure wasted a lot of time pushing unconstitutional solutions to state problems instead of doing his job, something something President Romney would’ve zeroed in on the economy…
There are two issues, the severability issue and the mandate itself. It is likely they will strike down the mandate and not strike down the whole bill, which has consequences, of course and some may argue the ACA is dead without the madate, but as far as what the SC will do, there are two arguments that are being made.
It’s illegal Socialism, like Socialist Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. You’ve heard all of the current GOP resistance to those assaults on liberty, right?
Agree. The ‘Mandate’ provision is required to offset the ‘No Pre-existing Conditions’ provision. That is how insurance and a risk pool work. If you are going to make the insurance companies accept all comers, you are going to have to offset that additional risk. If you are adding some unhealthy people to the pool (No Pre-existing Conditions), you need to add more healthy people to the pool (the Mandate). Take away the Mandate and the insurance companies will not be able to participate anymore. They will have to raise premiums for everyone else or price policies for people with PEC in the stratosphere to offset the additional risk. It starts to become a house of cards.
Actually, them striking down the mandate but leaving the rest intact would be the best possible outcome, because it would destroy all remnants of the current system, and force us into a civilized system. But I can’t see that happening, because if they’re going to be partisan enough to kill anything, they’re going to be partisan enough to kill the whole thing.