Here's to Your Health (Continued)

In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. As (ahem) someone pointed out not long ago, the controversial insurance mandate at the heart of the case was effectively nothing more than tax policy, and therefore well within the purview of Congress to legislate.  Kudos to Chief Justice John Roberts for applying my reasoning in his majority opinion. I look forward to receiving a thank-you note from him soon.  Perhaps a fruit basket.

This doesn't mean the political back-and-forth over healthcare reform is over, of course.  Indeed, now things get interesting.  If, as Republicans insist, Obamacare is a wildly and widely unpopular law, then the Supreme Court has done Mitt Romney a huge favor: Passionate Teabaggers now thwarted by the judicial branch will stream into voting booths to pull the lever for the man who has promised to repeal this repugnant law, based largely on a law he championed as governor of Massachusetts.  On the other hand, President Obama will surely campaign on the idea that healthcare reform provides or will provide significant benefits to the uninsured and to the American population as a whole--but that this now-definitively constitutional law will likely be undone if Republicans recapture the White House and/or both houses of Congress.  This election thus becomes largely a referendum on Obamacare, and the American people will rightly have the opportunity to express their preference.

The other interesting aspect of the court's decision was that it was Chief Justice Roberts and not Seesaw Kennedy who provided the deciding vote.  Most conservatives assumed Roberts was one of them.  Indeed, I think Roberts may have proven today that he IS a conservative--a REAL conservative--a judge who feels that the judiciary should largely defer to the legislature, as long as the legislature is reasonably acting within its boundaries.  It almost makes one optimistic that the Roberts Court won't be as retrograde as we had long feared.  Almost.