Will Chief Justice John Roberts Save Obamacare Again?

One never knows with absolute certainty how a Supreme Court justice will rule in a case, but there is growing speculation that Chief Justice John Roberts may break with his conservative brethren and vote to uphold the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare.  Personally, I think Obamacare went nowhere near far enough and support a single payer system - i.e., a national healthcare plan.  Meanwhile, Obamacare is better than the GOP alternative which is no plan at all.  A piece in Mother Jones looks at the consequences of a ruling against Obamacare and why Roberts may opt to uphold the law.  Here are article highlights:

As the end of the Supreme Court term nears, there's a growing anxiety surrounding the fate of the Affordable Care Act—and for good reason. If the court rules for the plaintiffs in the case of King v. Burwell, more than 6 million people could lose their health insurance subsidies, which would likely make their insurance plans unaffordable. National insurance markets could enter a death spiral that would cause many more to lose coverage.

But despite all the legitimate concern, it seems unlikely that the Supreme Court will kill off President Barack Obama's signature health care reform law. And that's largely because of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.

[T]here are a number of reasons why he's not likely to join his fellow conservatives jurists in knocking down the tax subsidies that now make insurance affordable for millions of people.

The King case is hitting the court late in the game. The previous challenge to the ACA was a fierce ideological battle over a health care law that was still largely hypothetical. Most of its major provisions hadn't yet kicked in, so killing it off didn't seem to have quite the same dire consequences as it would now that the nation's insurance system has been reshaped and millions of people have gained access to care.

This time, the fight over the ACA isn't so much an ideological dispute as it is a financial one. Billions of real dollars currently flowing to insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, and drug companies are at stake in the King case. With that much money involved, the players are also far more powerful and have much more to lose.

The case has pitted big businesses against the tea party, and in that fight, Roberts is much more likely to come down on the side of business.  

Overall, the Roberts court is far more business-friendly than any of of its modern predecessors. And Roberts has been a reliable vote for litigants backed by the US Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobby.

"Chief Justice Roberts has certainly been responsive to the interests and concerns of the business community in his first decade on the Court," says CAC founder Doug Kendall. "In King, all the businesses to weigh in are on the side of the Obama administration."

The nation's multibillion-dollar health insurance industry has also weighed in on the case on the side of the government. So has the Catholic Health Association, the American Hospital Association, and a host of other health care and doctors' groups, who argue that the plaintiffs have completely misinterpreted the law or its history.

On the side of the King plaintiffs? A couple of libertarian think tanks and the tinfoil-hat Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which has a statement of principles that says it's immoral for doctors to participate in Medicare and Medicaid.

Is establishment lawyer John Roberts really going to side with these guys over a business sector that accounts for nearly 20 percent of US GDP? Probably not.

The Healthcare Industry's Vested Interest in Obamacare Succeeding

The Republican Party is so busy prostituting itself to the Christofascist/Tea Party elements of the party base that oppose the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare - many of whom are frankly motivated primarily by a racist base hatred of Barack Obama - that they seem to be ignoring another powerful interest group that has significant reasons: the healthcare industry.  Many powerful players in the healthcare industry realize that repealing Obamacare and going back to the increasingly broken system that was previously in place is simply not acceptable.  With the ranks of the uninsured soaring but for Obamacare and healthcare costs out of control, at some point the entire structure will collapse without change.  The Los Angeles Times looks at why the healthcare industry will ultimately strive to make Obamacare work.  Here are excerpts:

WASHINGTON — President Obama's healthcare law, struggling to survive its botched rollout, now depends more than ever on insurance companies, doctor groups and hospitals — major forces in the industry that are committed to the law's success despite persistent tensions with the White House.

Many healthcare industry leaders are increasingly frustrated with the Obama administration's clumsy implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Nearly all harbor reservations about parts of the sweeping law.

But since 2010, they have invested billions of dollars to overhaul their businesses, design new insurance plans and physician practices and develop better ways to monitor quality and control costs.

Few industry leaders want to go back to a system that most had concluded was failing, as costs skyrocketed and the ranks of the uninsured swelled.

Nor do they see much that is promising from the law's Republican critics. The GOP has focused on repealing Obamacare, but has devoted less energy to developing a replacement.  Healthcare industry officials generally view several GOP proposals, such as limiting coverage for the poor and scuttling new insurance marketplaces created by the law, as more damaging than helpful to the nation's healthcare system.

"The principle of providing the opportunity for everyone to get health coverage and of joining everybody together in shared responsibility is the right one," said James Roosevelt Jr., president of Tufts Health Plan, one of Massachusetts' largest insurers. "No one has presented a credible alternative."

The value of the alliance between the administration and major insurers, hospitals, clinics and others in the healthcare industry can readily be seen in steps they have taken to help the White House overcome the rocky start of the law's new insurance marketplaces.

Major retail pharmacies, such as CVS Caremark, have agreed to market the law's benefits in their stores. And hospitals and health clinics in many states are helping patients sign up for coverage.

For many of these organizations, the prospect of new customers and a more rational system outweighs their sometimes intense irritation with the Obama administration.

Despite the frustrations, most insurers remain committed to moving to a new market that would achieve the central promise of the Affordable Care Act: that all consumers can buy health plans even if they have preexisting medical conditions.

Even the chief executive of WellPoint, the nation's second-largest health insurer, which spent heavily in 2010 to help defeat Democrats in Congress who had voted for Obamacare, signaled optimism this week about the prospects for people signing up for coverage under the law in coming months.

"The potential is there for a significant uptake," Joseph Swedish said in an interview this week at a conference for corporate executives sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.

Hospitals, which provided crucial backing for the law in hopes it would reduce the number of uninsured patients, have been redesigning the way they deliver care to keep patients out of the hospital, another goal of the law.

We are still not entirely sure where we are going," said Judy Rich, chief executive of Tucson Medical Center in Arizona, which has been partnering with local doctors to help patients stay healthy so they don't need to be hospitalized.  "But every time we reevaluate the options, we come back to one conclusion: This is fundamentally the right thing to do."

"The fact is that doctors and hospitals around the country are committed to achieving the goals of the health law: expanding coverage and, more importantly, raising quality … and making healthcare more cost-effective," he said.  "There is no going back."