The main Washington Post editorial on today's ruling by the Supreme Court summarizes why the ruling is good for the country. And that's not even factoring in how the provision of health care coverage for the poor and those with pre-existing conditions is in full accord with the Gospel message. I truly had feared that the extremism - dare I say insanity? - of Antonin Scalia might prevail and tens of millions of Americans would have been relegated to the status of disposable trash. Ironically, I saw an SPCA ad while blogging and the way in which the GOP and its "godly Christian" supporters relegate so many Americans to a status akin to animals scheduled for euthanizing truck me as telling. Conservatism - or at least today's version under the GOP and the Christofascists - is truly evil. It's all about greed and hording one's possessions and money and an utter disregard for the common humanity of other citizens. Here are highligts for the Post editorial:
THE SUPREME COURT’S 5 to 4 decision upholding the core of the Affordable Care Act is good news for the court and the country. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was statesmanlike in choosing to side with four more liberal justices in finding that the law’s most controversial provision, the mandate that individuals obtain health insurance, was a constitutional exercise of Congress’s power “to lay and collect taxes.”
[R]ather than use that finding to invalidate the law, as his four colleagues would have done, Justice Roberts cited precedent that instructs the court to resort to “every reasonable construction” that may “save a statute from unconstitutionality.”
In so doing, he also protected the court itself. It avoided playing the uncomfortable role of overturning a legislative solution four decades in the making, full of choices and tradeoffs among competing approaches and goals.
In the only defeat for the administration, the court curtailed the government’s power to compel states to expand coverage under the joint federal-state Medicaid program for the poor.
Even if President Obama is reelected, many practical questions remain. Is the penalty — now tax — imposed on those who fail to obtain insurance big enough to induce the uninsured to buy coverage? Are insurers permitted to charge different enough premiums based on age? These, and many more, are important practical questions whose answers will become known only now that the court, wisely, has allowed the law to go forward.
In an editorial Thursday, we said that many Americans would be watching the court to see whether, at a time of extreme partisanship, it could craft a decision that impressed as an act of law, not politics. In our view, the court passed that test of legitimacy. Now the arguments over Obamacare can continue where they are best fought out, in the political arena.
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