Will It Die?

Trey Smith

The US Supreme Court has a chance to do the people of America a big favor, perhaps atoning at last for its shameful betrayal of the electoral system in 2000 when a conservative majority stole the Florida, and national election, for George W. Bush, and for the liberal-led and equally shameful betrayal of fundamental property rights in the Kelo v New London case that, in 2005, upheld the public theft of private homes in Connecticut on behalf of a government-backed resort development. The court can atone for these betrayals by declaring the ramshackle, corrupt, hugely expensive and cynically misnamed Affordable Care Act to be unconstitutional.

The act, pushed through a Democratic Congress by President Obama in 2010, is a disaster, a cobbled-together set of measures that was fatally corrupted by the insurance lobby and other parts of the nation’s medical-industrial complex, which leaves millions uninsured, continues to tether workers to their employers like indentured servants, and undermines the Medicare program, which should be the cornerstone of a real health reform.

By killing this monstrosity of political expedience and lobbyist strong-arming, the Supreme Court’s conservative wing could give us a good chance to finally move the country to a real national health reform which would reduce costs substantially, provide quality health care to all, and finally drive a stake through the heart of the health insurance industry, the real “vampire squid” of American capitalism which has been sucking money out of American’s wallets and driving many into bankruptcy for decades (family health crises are the major single cause of bankruptcies and homes foreclosures in the country).

How can it be a good thing to kill a program that at least eliminates things like the denial of insurance coverage because of “pre-existing conditions,” or the throwing people off of coverage when they get seriously sick?

Because these reforms have come at the cost of keeping the insurance industry central to the whole health financing process, when all it is in reality is a blood-sucking middleman that makes its money by figuring out ways to deny care to those it is supposedly “covering.”

By killing the whole “Obamacare” law, the court will throw the system back into crisis mode, forcing the public and the political system to finally consider the only real answer: expansion of the Medicare program to cover everyone.
~ from Finally Getting it Right? Here’s Hoping the Supreme Court Tosses Out ‘Obamacare’ by Dave Lindorff ~

As you can see from the above snippet, Lindorff takes an unpopular position for a progressive. We've been told that, while Obamacare is far from perfect, everyone to the left-of-center should support and defend it, nonetheless. Obviously, Lindorff ignored the memo!

I share Lindorff's piece because I agree with him. I hope the court provides the last rites for this horrid piece of legislation. I'm not suggesting that there is nothing in the plan that is laudable; in my mind, the giant negative outweighs the few positives.

And that big negative is that Obama's plan does NOTHING to rein in costs. Even worse, the individual mandate is sort of, kind of like a backdoor bailout to the health insurance industry. It forces the citizenry to hand over infusions of cash for degraded services that will continue to rise year after year. What a step forward!

I know that, in the plan's defense, supporters point to the fact that the mandate is constitutional because the government requires folks to purchase auto insurance and that mandate has been upheld in the courts. However, I don't find this argument convincing at all. Driving an automobile is a privilege. Though it may cause some inconveniences, a person doesn't have to drive themselves in order to survive.

Basic health is a right. Not having access to health care is far from a mere inconvenience -- it can be an early and unneeded death sentence. For me, that's why comparing auto insurance to health insurance is like comparing apples to ping pong balls.