Healthcare is upheld by Supreme Court 5-4

By Luke Freedman in Sydney, Australia

29 June 2012

Anyone familiar with the famous Dewey defeats Truman headline will probably get a chuckle out of this Photoshop via Daily Kos member Brainwrap. Both CNN and Fox News originally incorrectly reported the mandate had been struck down. I’ll try and do a longer post on this Monday but for right now here are my major takeaways which I'll update throughout the day.

• The opinion is a very interesting one.  While the individual mandate is upheld as a tax, there were five votes saying it violated the Commerce Clause.  None of the lower courts had accepted the taxation argument, but I’ve argued that this interpretation makes sense.
• This is a big victory for Obama’s legacy. If the bill survives through the next election, healthcare is almost certainly going to be the defining achievement of his presidency.
• It’s amazing how close we came to having the entire Affordable Care Act being struck down. Pretty much everyone expected Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy to vote as a bloc, but it was Roberts alone who saved the the law.
• The ruling on the Medicaid expansion is an interesting wrinkle. The Court declared 7-2 that the government couldn’t take away existing Medicaid funds if states refused to comply with the new Medicaid rules. Now some states face a difficult political choice of whether to accept the Medicaid expansion for which the federal government is footing over 90% of the bill.
• The ruling raises the stakes of the election as the fate of the ACA could rest on whether Republicans take back the White House and the Senate. It’s an interesting question though how much of the law can be repealed without a filibuster proof majority.
• Here’s my reading list to keep you busy. The actual opinion, the opinion in plain English, an explanation of Obamacare, what it means for Obama, what it means for Romney, the implications for the the 2012 elections and why it's still a partial victory for those who want to curb federal power.

 

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