BREAKING: Supreme Court Upholds Individual Mandate As A Tax

[TheKentuckian]

342. You are drastically undervaluing the cartels influence on the bill

While overvaluing the money, a lot of which was spent to influence the bill rather than to kill it and the total spent compared to the take brought in. 16% or more of GDP flows through their hands, if they thought that the gravy train was going to get killed or even take a serious hit, how much would it really be worth to them to derail it? Surely more than a year's resources and certainly a months worth but they did no such thing nor did they flood the airwaves anything like they did during the last battle over reform.

I also think it is off base to look at the cartel as one mind, they pull in more than a single direction and they certainly came nowhere near pulling out all the stops and they most certainly had tremendous input and even direct influence over drafting the bill. The "stakeholders" (the insurance cartel and the pharmaceutical industry) were at the table and stayed there. No doubt there are provisions the cartel hate but in no small measure this is their bill.