In a completely expected development, a conservative activist judge made a conservative activist decision, ignoring decades of judicial precedent to declare the main provision of the health reform law -- requiring most Americans to purchase health insurance -- unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court has long held that our federal government has the authority to enact laws that regulate activities which impact interstate commerce. The health care system is woven into our entire economy. And virtually every American citizen -- insured or uninsured -- participates in the health care system in some way.
The conservative activist legal attack is to claim the Constitution's "Commerce Clause" doesn't apply to "inactivity" -- a decision not to buy health insurance.
But two other judges have already ruled -- to much less media attention -- that such illogic flies in the face of economic reality. Most recently, Judge Norman Moon wrote in upholding the law:
...by choosing to forgo insurance, plaintiffs are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now, through the purchase of insurance.
The fact that a man who has a "long history in Republican politics," and was appointed by President George W. Bush, accepted a conservative attack on long-standing legal precedent by creating a massive legal loophole to prevent our government from acting in the public interest, says nothing about the actual merits of the claim.
However, since there are four conservative activist judges on the Supreme Court -- one short of a majority -- we cannot be completely sanguine about the prospect for the Court to decimate the legal underpinning of a representative and responsive government.
And we cannot assume that the non-activist judges are completely sealed off from the public discourse. We cannot allow the right-wing to smother the media landscape with its hatchet job on the Constitution. We must speak out in favor of our Constitution, as it was written by the founders, which empowers our government to "regulate," to act, and to represent the public will.
Originally posted at OurFuture.org.
Follow Bill Scher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billscher
How can you condemn the price gouging, greedy insurers and then mandate every American pay the same insurers for services they do not currently use, need, or want.
Insurance by it's very nature is a gamble. The purchaser gambles that they will charge as much or more than they pay into the plan, Insurers take that bet, hoping that they collect far more than they pay out,...needless to say the house always wins, after all that is how they collect such obscene profits, no?
The insurers only stand to gain from the additional 30 million plus policies generated by the individual mandate, then logically, the individual mandate requires the individual to pay for services they will never require or use,......simple!!
How do we pay for health care reform ?
** How do you pay for tax cuts for the wealthy  ?
1.     First attempt : threatening Social Security and Medicare Cut through the deficit panel.
2.     Second attempt : holding the desperate Hostage, say, by the Ransom.
**Â Inaction cost, $9trillion over the next decade, ((Some of CBO analysis : While the costs of the financial bailouts and economic stimulus bills are staggering, they are only a fraction of the coming costs from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that each year Medicaid will expand by 7 percent, Medicare by 6 percent, and Social Security by 5 percent. These programs face a 75-year shortfall of $43 trillion--60 times greater than the gross cost of the $700 billion TARP financial bailout)).
Over the duration of healthcare debate, using the preliminary cost analysis of CBO, the reps opposed the public option stubbornly, but after the release of final score, they have been defiant on the referee.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that :
Inaction cost in relation to health care reform totals $9trillion over the next decade.Â
Reform will reduce the federal deficit by $143 billion over the next 10 years and as much as $1 trillion during the following decade.