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Health Care! Yay?
I'm amazingly pleased and frankly surprised that the individual mandate (and the whole ACA) were upheld by the Supreme Court this morning. Was not expecting Roberts to side as he did...perhaps a make-up call for Citizens United? But no, I kid. And this ruling is going to keep a lot of mayhem from happening in the short term, because I'm sure we all know what would have happened were the insurance companies required to extend coverage to everybody without having the mandate in place. My premiums are already inflated enough, thank you (and I'm one of those healthy twentysomethings who doesn't "need" insurance...but I'm doing my part and carrying it anyway). And if the whole ACA had gone kersplooie over this, we'd have millions of people gone uninsured again. It's not perfect, but I think this is the best the country's going to do for the time being.
What I'm honestly confused about is why the Court upheld this under Congress' taxing powers instead of under the Commerce Clause. Hasn't there been enough wailing and gnashing of teeth on the pro-mandate side about how yes, the individual mandate does affect the entire bloody system, in the aggregate? As I understand it, Scalia at least is starting to back off of the expansive power the Court has afforded to Congress under the Commerce Clause in the past, so this may be the Court trying to rein that in a little. Though frankly, this is a different world from two hundred years ago, and I personally think it's appropriate to allow the federal government more power considering how easy it is for Region A to affect Region B these days.
I'm worried about what this ruling may do to progressive legislation in the future, quite honestly. I wouldn't even begin to call myself knowledgable about the Commerce Clause (will ask the law-school-grad fiance about all this later), but I'm leery at the line they appear to have drawn in the sand. I just hope this doesn't scuttle further attempts to fix this country, because boy howdy do we need it.
What I'm honestly confused about is why the Court upheld this under Congress' taxing powers instead of under the Commerce Clause. Hasn't there been enough wailing and gnashing of teeth on the pro-mandate side about how yes, the individual mandate does affect the entire bloody system, in the aggregate? As I understand it, Scalia at least is starting to back off of the expansive power the Court has afforded to Congress under the Commerce Clause in the past, so this may be the Court trying to rein that in a little. Though frankly, this is a different world from two hundred years ago, and I personally think it's appropriate to allow the federal government more power considering how easy it is for Region A to affect Region B these days.
I'm worried about what this ruling may do to progressive legislation in the future, quite honestly. I wouldn't even begin to call myself knowledgable about the Commerce Clause (will ask the law-school-grad fiance about all this later), but I'm leery at the line they appear to have drawn in the sand. I just hope this doesn't scuttle further attempts to fix this country, because boy howdy do we need it.