Supreme Court poised to strike down PPACA [View all]

[Alcibiades]

After Bush v. Gore, no one can suggest that the Supreme Court is an impartial, apolitical body. That case had everything that the literature on the Court would suggest would lead to the case not being heard, except for one thing: the Court cared a great deal that a Democrat not occupy the White House.

And so we go through a farce this week, with the Supreme Court hearing arguments about the PPACA. They will strike down the whole thing, not matter what is said. We've spent most of my lifetime dealing with this issue politically, and yet, here, when we find a political solution has been arrived at, the Supreme Court is set to strike down the whole thing and return to the status quo ante.

I had heard a supporter of the PPACA on the radio this week asked about portability, about how it would be that a provider in one state would be able to get paid by an insurer in another. His answer was that he didn't know, but that "I'm sure they thought of that." Folks, no one ought to make this argument either. The PPACA has no severability provision in it. Imagine that. How can that be? That's lawmaking 101: this is a big, important piece of legislation, one sure to go before the Cort at some point, and yet the severability clause was somehow left out in reconciling the House and Senate bills. We're supposed to buy that? Here it is, the most important health care legislation this country has ever seen, and severability was left out "by mistake?"

It's enough to make one paranoid. It's as though the whole thing has been a delay so that insurance companies can continue to ratchet up premiums and copays so that they can make ever more money. Its as if the same folks who made sure that the most important provisions wouldn't take effect until 2014 also knew that the court would strike it down before then, and so omitted a severability clause.

After the Supreme Court strikes down the PPACA, we need to make this a campaign issue. We have tried working with insurers, to the point of passing, under Democratic control, a proposal first outlined by the Heritage Foundation in 1989. If an insurance-run health care scheme is unconstitutional, then it's time for Medicare for all.