Obama in Front of the Supreme Court

Seen from a European perspective, it could be a scene from a bad dream. On the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, that marble palace on Capitol Hill in Washington, two Americas are rallying: the America that wants to get rid of the federal government and the America that expects that the state will establish some minimum rules of play. The most important domestic battle of the Obama presidency is now about his healthcare reform, which aspires to give coverage to 30 million more citizens and to put an end to a healthcare system that’s deficient and extremely expensive, whose cost is supposedly 17 percent of the gross domestic product. The nine Supreme Court justices, each with life tenure, debated the constitutionality of “Obamacare” for three days this week. The reelection of the president is not going to depend on Putin or Iran, but rather the on the economy and whether or not these judges, who are appointed by the presidents, in accordance with their ideologies, give a green light to the health care law. The court is divided: five conservative justices and four liberals. Two of them, both women, have been appointed by Obama. Outside the court, the self-proclaimed patriots were rallying with signs asking that the government get out of their lives, while those in favor of the law responded that it is not American to leave people to die because they don’t have coverage. Not since 2008, when the Supreme Court gave the electoral victory to Bush over Gore, has a meeting of the court has stirred up so much attention.

Barack Obama, who is considered by many to be a socialist supporter of the European welfare state, converted the healthcare reform into the emblematic project of his presidency. He was not attempting universal healthcare, but only to repair the indignity of an estimated 50 million citizens of the leading power of the world who do not have health insurance. Through an agreement with private insurance providers, the law prohibited the discrimination of the elderly and the denial of coverage to those already sick. The new plan will raise the costs for the insurance companies. In return, the law obligates those without insurance to buy a policy, increasing the profits of the health insurance providers, guaranteeing their business and making sustainable a healthcare system that currently isn’t. Obama now pays the price of a reform that is unfinished, incomprehensible for the majority of North Americans (only 26 percent support it) and poorly sold. Twenty-six states, all with Republican governors, have challenged it before the Supreme Court.

The individual mandate that obligates citizens to insure themselves provokes the grinding of teeth from the most conservative Americans. Can the legislation make you buy health care? Yes, applying an archaic constitutional norm that permits the federal government to regulate trade between the states. Those who argue against the rule claim that if this is so, they could also force you to eat bananas. It is the Gordian knot that the Supreme Court should untie. The tea party, the profoundly intense party that refers to the sacredness of individual liberty as the measure of all things and criticizes the governmental activism that Obama has used, now asks the Supreme Court to exercise, in the opposite sense, a judicial activism. In order to ruin “Obamacare” and the president, along with it, they are attempting to make the Supreme Court prioritize the right of the citizen to be sick and without insurance. It seems like a bad joke. Justice Antonin Scalia wondered, “If the government can do this, what else can it not do?” The president of the court, Justice John Roberts, of the conservative majority, asked, “So, can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services?”

The question in the background of this debate is not legal but, rather, political: The competence of Congress and should not be judicialized in the opinion of the liberal sectors. The battle against the law has turned into a new test of patriotism in the middle of election season. For progressives, it would mean disarming the government and undermining its authority to make up for the failures of the market. There are those who think that, if the Supreme Court puts an end to the law when they hand down their final decision in June, it will incapacitate the federal government for a generation. The Supreme Court’s decisions determine the nature of society, operating as the constitutional court as well as the judicial review. It was the Supreme Court who established the right to abortion with their decision of Roe vs. Wade, who caused the resignation of Nixon by forcing him to hand in the secret tapes in the Watergate case, who decided that organized prayer in public schools is illegal and violates the First Amendment. It is hoped that the nine justices, over their political passions, will carry out their duty heeding to the motto of this unique institution, carved above the front of the building: “Equal Justice under the Law.”