The American Health Care System: Freedom Ad Absurdum?

The U.S. Supreme Court wants to overturn Obama’s healthcare reform law. Conservatives have the upper hand in the court; congressional authority will thus be undermined.

If the mood emanating from the U.S. Supreme Court isn’t deceptive, it looks bad for Barack Obama’s health care reforms. These are the reforms on which Obama has spent nearly all the political capital he accrued during his first term. But his reforms won’t be brought down by a Republican president: Obama looks likely to be re-elected this November no matter which Republican he faces. The reforms will be overturned by a thin majority of conservative Supreme Court justices, who represent the national mood in America.

It’s a national mood that views the powers of the state, the government and the Congress as enemies of freedom, all of which must be restricted at any cost. It is now conceivable that the Supreme Court may for the first time in history declare a key law already passed by the U.S. Congress as being unconstitutional.

How the nine justices will ultimately decide is purely speculative at this point. The decision won’t be announced until June. But after three days of hearings, summary evidence appears to indicate that the Roberts court expresses doubt that congressional primacy is the highest sovereignty.

Lack of Health Insurance Protection Leads to Exorbitant Medical Costs.

The court’s tendencies could hardly be expressed better than by a comparison drawn by Justice Antonin Scalia. When questioning the government attorney Donald Verrilli, Scalia mockingly remarked that requiring citizens to buy health insurance was similar to forcing them to buy broccoli.

The parallel is as far-fetched as it is revealing. No one is disadvantaged if Americans don’t buy broccoli, but if 50 million Americans remain without health insurance, the costs of providing them with emergency medical services are merely passed on to the American taxpayer. And that is one major reason why medical costs are so exorbitantly high in the United States.

The fact that Scalia, of all people, came up with this analogy must be deeply troubling to the White House. Of the conservative judges on the court, Antonin Scalia was the one whom could be most trusted to vote with the liberals.

The consequences of declaring mandatory insurance unconstitutional, and thus invalidating the entire law, would be as significant as the decisions banning racial segregation or permitting abortion. This time, however, the consequences would be even more far reaching: Congress would then not only have to ask itself what its purpose was, it would also make the already highly toxic health care issue untouchable forever.

Within the last 20 years, two presidents have already burned their fingers on the health care issue. It will hardly happen a third time. What will remain is only this: The freedom to choose to die without health insurance. What a great victory!