Decision time is fast approaching. No, I don’t mean the election in November, or what to nosh on while watching USC’s first game victory of the season on September 1st, though certainly these two choices are self evidently very important. The big decision is this month. It will be made by the Supreme Court of the United States. I’m talking Obamacare. Will it get a yes? A no? A dash of yes, and a dollop of no?
After the hearing in March conventional wisdom insists the court will strike down the mandate…at least. Possibly even the entire law. However, whenever convention wisdom coalesces I become instinctively wary. When it comes to conventional wisdom I am suspicious by nature. The talking heads are too often wrong. Dead wrong.
My guess is a 5-4 decision one way or the other. Justice Kennedy holds the trump card. He seemed very skeptical of the mandate during the oral arguments. Seemed. He could have been bluffing too.
My argument for a while has been that politically Obama needs his signature “achievement” to go down and go down hard. As in the entire law is ritually slaughtered by the court. Preferably on its steps. If only the mandate goes and the stuff people like stays, then Obama must run on his “achievement”. But without the mandate the bill collapses under its own weight. He knows it. Everyone knows it. The thing becomes unworkable. The insurance cabal will heave a blizzard of money Romney’s way to stave off collapse.
Conversely, if the entire law is deep sixed Obama is a free man. Sure, it will be ugly in the first few news cycles. Headlines will scream: FAIL! OBAMA CLOCKED BY COURT! PRESIDENT’S FIRST YEAR WASTED! The GOP won’t be able to contain its glee and, as we all know, too much GOP glee is a turnoff. A big one. Even the nice ones morph into Rick Scott. Therein lies the key for Barry O.
People like bits and pieces of the law. People want something done about healthcare and, contrary to GOP mythology, they want the government to do it. If, by September, when the hooting and hollering has faded, Obama can respectfully nod to the Supreme Court’s final say in our system. Then trash the GOP hammer and tongs, focusing on the elements of the law people actually liked. Please note that Axelrod and Co are already setting up this meme. The GOP is only for the rich, only for the corporations. These GOP thugs took away your child’s right to be on your insurance plan until he/she was 26! And don’t get me started about pre-existing conditions! Only me, and the Democrats, and me! can protect you!
Actually, from a purely political standpoint it’s a pretty good argument.
If the court upholds the entire law, Obama’s in trouble. Ignore the gloating he and Democrats will do in the immediate aftermath. Wait for the Fall. The heavy burden of Obamacare will dog this President without mercy. There is no evidence anywhere, from Scott Brown’s win to the Tea Party erupting on to the scene, that this law, with the mandate at its core, has caused anything but fury and disgust among the majority. I said here many months ago that the mandate was political poison. It was. It is. If the court upholds the entire law Romney will have Christmas in July.
It’s a strange, strained moment. The “winner” may well end up being the loser.
What do you think? Etch-a-sketch your bias away and just predict:
Obamacare is so bad that if the SC doesn’t strike it down Congress will have to repeal it or fix it.
If they fixed it, we could actually get real HCR out of the deal.
No, I’m not smoking hopium.
Everyone’s acting as if the mandate will go down 5-4. The obamalonians are already framing it as a “politicized” ruling.
I stand by my prediction that Sotomayor indicated she was ruling against, at least on the mandate. She was brutalized by barry’s people, though — we’ll see if she stuck to her guns.
When you say Sotomayor was brutalized by barry’s people, what do you mean?
I seriously don’t know. thanks
I think obama’s lash-out was directed at her. I’m guessing there was pressure via back channels. You can’t touch a SC justice directly, but you can hurt the people they care about.
It’s a hunch.
1. a certiori (it’s a tax) 8-1 for (Thomas)
2. mandate const.: 6-3 against (Sotomayor)
3. Repeal all: 5-4 for
4. Medicare too broad: 5-4 against (Kennedy)
1> 8-1 that the mandate penalty is NOT a tax, so the court can hear the case.
FYI, those slut-monkeys at MoveOn will be endorsing Teh Messiah within the next 14 days.
MoveOn is pathetic. Fast becoming a backwater.
Why are democrats reminding me of civil war re-enacters these days?
Because they can’t dress their line worth shit?
I was told that Roberts would try to get as big a majority to vote down the mandate as possible and negotiate to let the rest stand. The reasoning was that it would shoot down the “politicized’ court accusations out of the gate and the larger the vote either way hamstrings Obama. It is also payback to traditional Republican constituencies, big insurance, big pharma, and big lobbying, for doing dirty deals with Obama. If everything but the mandate stands, the Republicans will spend campaign dollars highlighting the various poison pills it contains and promise years of fun in reversing them. Without the mandate the whole thing collapses as it is based on extorting as much money as possible from all concerned.
Without the bottomless pit of uncontrolled skyrocketing premiums (and drug costs!) commanded and enforced by the IRS, it will collapse. Reduced to its simplest form the Affordable Healthcare Act is a shakedown scheme with a few arguably unworkable sweeteners thrown in to fool the rubes. It is an attempt at legalized extortion from Obamaland. Isn’t everything he does about taking as much wealth and power from one group, region, industry, or whatever and giving it to his pals? Single payer would have pissed off his pals.
Who told you that? It’s very plausible, intriguing — and would be a lovely outcome.
Obamacare was a huge ‘get’ for the drug cartel. Those unable to afford the mandate would have been ‘helped’ by the gov’t, creating another elephantine,inefficient bureaucracy. In essence, Obamacare was an enormous expansion of Medicaid. In the past, small hc providers, such as local clinics, had no bargaining power with Pharma, the solution to that was to drop the expensive newer drugs, in favor of those that had become generic. Back in the day, a lot of Big gov’t entities just paid the hugely inflated bills without a whimper, i recall something about hammers and toilet seats.
That was then, this is now. Even if Obamacare had some redeeming qualities, with a tax base on life support, it is untenable.
You are right John, the Court’s decision will be interesting, but even if it rules in O’s favor, it is still unaffordable, and unworkable, too bad the Court can’t rule on common sense.
As for O’s machine ‘brutalizing’ anyone, that behavior only works as long as people pretend not to notice, all things considered, the machine is fast becoming a paper tiger.
I no longer have the current statistics, maybe they can be googled, but for years it was an open secret that the majority of Walmart workers qualified for food stamps and Medicaid. This was due to the fact that very few in non management jobs were given 40 hrs of work per week. Thus allowing Walmart to say they ‘provided’ health insurance to full time employees.
So it is not just the unemployed who would get gov’t ‘help’ with their mandate payments. Most people who are not accustomed to gvt provided healthcare would be very unhappy with the results. The idea that the gvt can force private insurers to ‘pay’ for freebies is laughable. Private co’s Always get paid, by Someone. If Obamacare gets approved, the best advice for anyone would be Stay Healthy and take vigilant care of your teeth, because the gov’t won’t buy you new ones.
John, I’m not so sure the majority of the American people want the government to handle healthcare.
Being a former democrat (now Independent), I used to believe in the government to stand up for the best interests of the people, but not anymore. Our present government is, by all intents and purposes, totally corrupt; filled with greedy, power hungry, narcissists who have shown us time and time again that they don’t give a rats azz about we, the people. If they were so inclined to prepare the kind of healthcare legislation which would benefit the American people and not Big Pharma and the insurance companies and be chocked full of unrelated pork, why haven’t they done it before now?
Of course, our esteemed representatives would never accept the kind of healthcare that is “obamacare”. Hell no! Their healthcare benefits are infinately better than what will be found in obamacare (and I doubt any of them have read it cover to cover). To add insult to injury, they speechify often about how the people should tighten their belts during these hard economic times, but they, being the one’s who helped get us into this mess with their allegiance to lobbyist and the corporate power elite, have NEVER followed their own advice and NEVER miss a chance to give themselves a raise at midnight and go home to their respective districts to engage in more backroom deals in order to raise more money to keep them in power .
As it stands now, I agree with Romney to let the states decide on their own individual healthcare legislation. Hopefully, it would encourage competition and lower premiums and open up the ability to buy health insurance across state lines. At least, it’s an approach that deserves more debate than it’s gotten so far. Moreover, on the state level it might make it more feasible for the people to engage in a debate with their representatives in what should go into their healthcare bill than it would on the federal level, considering how obamacare was so sloppily put together behind closed doors with nary a word from the people about it.
With all of the partisan, backbitting, self-serving betrayal exhibited by those clowns in D.C., I wouldn’t trust this government with anything.
“I’m not so sure the majority of the American people want the government to handle healthcare”
Poll after poll shows 7 in 10 want a public option.
I want public option and they haven’t called me yet.
Correction: 8 in 10. (7 + Jay = 8)
not overly happy to admit that I think like Karl Rove but look what I found today:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303734204577464483237036526.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The conservatives on the court will not overstep what they see as their constitutionally-authorized powers and scrap the whole law; they will declare the mandate unconstitutional and leave the rest (lack of severability clause notwithstanding) because they do not see themselves as entitled to overrule Congress, a co-equal branch of government, without good cause. The liberals on the court will go along with this. The vote against the mandate could even be 6-3.
But this result leaves a BIG mess for congress and Obama, especially. With the mandate dead, how do they FUND this monstrosity? For the GOP House and Dem Senate, the problem will be figuring out WHAT to retain and how to pay for it, not an easy task since the senate has not passed a budget for 3 years. But the resulting uncertainty will last much longer than anyone predicts and that will have the effect of chilling business activity and hiring even further as everyone waits in suspense to see what this mess is gonna cost them. And that is baaaaaad news for Obama. He desperately needs business activity to pick up somehow and this ain’t gonna help.
HELP ME.
Why do I take the bait when someone says something blindly and stupidly partisan on Facebook? WHY WHY WHY?
Tamerlane,
You overlook the point of my argument — our government is totally corrupt (except for a precious few in Congress who actually care about the American people and recognize that they were elected to represent our best interests. Polls don’t really matter when you have a corrupt government.
There is no law that says each state can decide to put a public option in their respective healthcare bill, but I have no faith in the federal government to do right by us by virtue of the kind of healthcare the Congress demands for itself but won’t give the people who pay their salaries!
If the people are only polled but not part of a real debate on the kind of healthcare legislation which best suits them, then polls are nothing more than a puff of smoke…there one minute and gone the next, with no discernable impact on enacting what the polls say the people wanted at all.
Which is why I don’t trust the government to handle my healthcare or much of anything else for that matter.
I don’t trust the private sector for nuthin’. They augur you for services and deny you coverage. pace Romney liking to fire people, I can’t change the personnel running the private healthcare cartel, but I can so the public.
tamerlane,
If you can change the public healthcare personnel, please explain how, if the system within this public sector is corrupt and totally controlled by the very private sector power elites you say you don’t trust.
In the end, it’s going to have to take the American people waking up to the reality that we have no power, much less a voice, in making any kind of real change in our government when our votes are counted by machines. The ONLY way American citizens have any power over our representatives is through the ballot box…however, our so-called “ballot box” now resides inside a voting machines’ software and can virtually count the votes exactly the way the software was programmed and you would never know because the voting machine vendor is protected by proprietary secret laws!
Why do you think those in the government ignore us and act so arrogantly towards us and our needs? Because they know you can’t vote them out, because you didn’t vote them in.
The power elite decides who stays and who goes, not you and me. Go to the website BlackBoxVoting.org and see for yourself the mountains of evidence collected over years of exhaustive investigative work into “election fraud” (not “voter fraud”) which proves our elections do not reflect the will of the people, but the will of the power elite who helped push these machines into our elections.