The only
change the Supreme Court's majority believes in is change that takes us back to
the 18th century.
Serious
commentators are telling us not to assume that the Supreme Court is going to
find "Obamacare" unconstitutional just because the conservative
justices gave the government lawyer a hard time when the case came before the
Court last month.
Somehow
that doesn't make me sleep better at night. This is the same Court that gave us
the Citizens United decision, which opened the sluice gates
of special-interest money that flooded a political system that was already
awash in it. The ruling was the Court's worst decision since Dred Scott in
1857, which ruled that no Americans of African descent, whether enslaved or
free, were U.S.
You
think that the Court is going to find mandatory health insurance
constitutional? Nah.
In
the first place, you had four votes against the plan right out of the gate.
Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito are
old-fasioned conservatives. The only change they believe in is change that
takes us back to the 18th century.
In
the second place, the high court's lone swing judge, Justice Anthony Kennedy,
was one of the more hostile questioners. "You are changing the relationship
of the individual to the government," he told the government's lawyer.
So
forget about it, you health care fans, the vote is going to be 5-4 against the
Affordable Care Act.
The
only real question is whether the justices will strike down the entire plan or
just the compulsory mandate. That's the part that requires people to buy
insurance or pay a fine.
I
say it doesn't make much difference. The only way you can pay for the other
provisions of the bill — providing coverage regardless of pre-existing
conditions, extending coverage to the poor — is by making everyone pay for it.
Without
the mandate, the bill for uninsured people who show up at the emergency room
after an auto accident or a heart attack, or with severe diabetes or cancer,
will be paid — as it is now — by the rest of us. Those of us with
insurance will continue to pay higher insurance premiums and hospital bills
than we should.
Apparently,
that's the way a near-majority of American people want it. According to polls,
nearly half of American oppose the mandate.
Oddly
enough, however, 85 percent favored requiring insurance companies to cover
pre-existing conditions.
In
other words, the American people want health care, they just don't want to pay
for it. There's a lot of that going around.
Let's
review. According to the Supreme Court majority, we can't prevent anyone from
carrying a gun into a school, church, or Fourth of July picnic.
And
we can't stop billionaires from buying up our system of democracy by the board
foot, shoveling unlimited amounts of money into Super PACs, which then buy
vicious ads aimed at their favorite candidate's opponent.
And
now it looks like we can't provide health care insurance to people in our
society who need but can't afford it.
That
apparently is the New Freedom. Instead of those freedoms from want and fear that FDR
articulated in 1941, we've got the freedom to want and fear. The Republican
revolution is complete.
There
was a time when I thought that this radical conservatism we're seeing was a
temporary fad. I thought it was something we'd grow out of, like a teenager
with bad hair.
I
mean, after all, the Republican agenda is mainly about low taxes for the rich,
paid for by cutting services for the not-rich. How can you win an election with
a platform like that in a country where the services for the poor aren't that
great in the first place and the rich are getting richer all the time?
But
a lot of people seem to be buying it. And even if it doesn't happen this time,
even if President Barack Obama is re-elected, it won't be over.
The
Grover Norquists and Koch brothers of the world will still be there with their
bags of money and a Supreme Court willing to let them spend it.
OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann
Arbor, Michigan
