Obamacare was a compromise that allowed private insurance companies among other components of the medical-industrial-complex, to continue profiteering by impoverishing many Americans with their thieving rates we are all required to pay in some form. Anything that that prevents it from being just a status quo law is good and here is why.
The federal judge in Texas who ruled that the entire Obamacare law is unconstitutional will add much to the continued debate on healthcare.
First as reported by Protect Our Care, it is clear the judge’s ruling will be overturned. Here are quotes from a few scholars.
Nicholas Bagley, University of Michigan Law Professor: “It’s A Case Of Raw Judicial Activism. Don’t for A Moment Mistake It For The Rule Of Law.” “In any event, it doesn’t matter what Congress meant to do in 2010. It matters what Congress meant to do in 2017, when a different Congress made a different call about whether the mandate was essential. We know what Congress wanted to do in 2017: repeal the mandate and leave the rest of the act intact. Its judgment could not have been plainer. (I know. I was there! So were you. It wasn’t that long ago.) That’s not how O’Connor sees it. In perhaps the most remarkable passage in a remarkable opinion, he wrote that the 2017 Congress ‘intended to preserve the Individual Mandate because the 2017 Congress, like the 2010 Congress, knew that provision is essential to the ACA.’ Your jaw should be on the floor. On no account did Congress in 2017 ‘intend to preserve’ the individual mandate. It meant to get rid of the loathed mandate — and it did, by eliminating the penalty that gave it force and effect…This case is different; it’s an exercise of raw judicial activism. Don’t for a moment mistake it for the rule of law.” [Washington Post, 12/15/18]
And then from a supporter of the law and one that didn’t, they both agree the ruling is political, judicial activism.
Conservative Legal Scholar Jonathan Adler And Abbe Gluck, Professor Of Health Law At Yale Law School: “This Decision Makes A Mockery Of The Rule Of Law And Basic Principles Of Democracy.”“A ruling this consequential had better be based on rock-solid legal argument. Instead, the opinion by Judge Reed O’Connor is an exercise of raw judicial power, unmoored from the relevant doctrines concerning when judges may strike down a whole law because of a single alleged legal infirmity buried within…We were on opposing sides of the 2012 and 2015 Supreme Court challenges to the Affordable Care Act, and we have different views of the merits of the act itself. But as experts in the field of statutory law, we agree that this decision makes a mockery of the rule of law and basic principles of democracy — especially Congress’s constitutional power to amend its own statutes and do so in accord with its own internal rules.” [New York Times, 12/15/18]
And then there is this.
Law Professors From Both Sides Of The Aisle, Including Jonathan Adler, Ilya Somin, Nicholas Bagley, Abbe Gluck, and Kevin Walsh, Note That Despite Their Different Policy Perspectives, They Agree That DOJ’s Arguments About Severability Are Inconsistent With The Law. “[A] court’s substitution of its own judgment for that of Congress would be an unlawful usurpation of congressional power and violate basic black-letter principles of severability. Yet that is what the plaintiff States and the United States invite this Court to do...This time-shifting of congressional intent misapplies severability doctrine. By expressly amending the statute in 2017 and setting the penalty at zero while not making other changes, Congress eliminated any need to examine earlier legislative findings or to theorize about what Congress would have wanted. Congress told us what it wanted through its 2017 legislative actions.” [Jonathan Adler et. al, 6/14/18]
Republicans and activists judges playing games with the healthcare of Americans present the perfect narrative for Democrats and Progressives to lead the charge of codifying health care as a right. As such, they are required to write laws that enforce that right. They could then make the mathematical and moral case for single-payer Medicare for all.