If the healthcare law is overturned, universal healthcare is dead forever

[Brittain33]

The issue is that our employer-based health care system appears to be collapsing faster than a future collapse of Obamacare (through higher government expenditures, is it?) could take place. I think we have a ways to go before we get to the abyss of the bond market vigilantes deciding government has to get out of the healthcare business for non-olds, and in the meantime, so much else will have changed that many options will have to be on the table for a solution.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2017814967_webinsure23.html

The share of people with employer-provided health care has fallen from 67% to 58% between 2000 and 2010. Some of it is due to the recession, but I don't know if we've ever seen a significant rebound in coverage associated with higher employment.

Obamacare won't collapse in a vacuum. It's a given that whatever emerges from its ashes, if it collapses spectacularly, won't be the status quo ante because the status quo ante is doing a fine job of dying on its own. What will we have?

[Brittain33]

The problem is that not buying insurance isn't really non-participation in the health care market--everyone participates in that market, except maybe for the Amish who can stay close enough to home to never get in a car accident and get taken to the hospital. That "inactivity" manifests itself in suddenly getting sick and going to the hospital, getting high bills you can't pay, and then resorting to bankruptcy to discharge those bills, which has an impact on the health care economy. I'm not making up that sequence of events... it happened to one of the plaintiffs in the case who was suing about the imposition on her freedom of the mandate. She went to the hospital and then bankruptcy court, hardy har har.

[Brittain33]

Guys everything you choose not to do, or do, affects commerce down the line - there is no escape. If I don't eat certain foods that I should eat, as opposed to other ones, I most certainly will affect the health care market, and my cost to the system. Everything.

True, but that's just a slippery slope argument, which isn't an argument in itself. Health care expenditures are a massive part of our economy and part of interstate commerce. You don't have to stretch to see that. Someone eating broccoli or not, you have to stretch really far to see that as part of interstate commerce. And even then, we have an actual precedent of people growing wheat or marijuana for their own possession, which is far more trivial than claiming freedom to not participate in the health insurance market and then getting sick and freeloading on everyone else for health care.

[Brittain33]

So if the government subsidizes something ("free" emergency rooms), then it can force people to buy insurance to pay for it, to take some of the subsidy back? 

You guys have done the best you can I think. What you are left with is a size and importance thing. But that isn't a bright line. When does doing nothing rise to the level of import vis a vis the subsidy that it becomes interstate commerce? Interstate commerce before has never before been a function of size and importance, just about the nature of the underlying activity or lack thereof.

Health insurance and health care is one of the largest parts of our economy. It's hard to conceive of something taking up 10% (or whatever) of our GDP and not crossing state lines in some way. The mandate is not interstate commerce but it is essential to the functioning of the healthcare system and is covered by "necessary and proper." This is all pretty straightforward. I may not be able to convince you, but it makes sense to me.

[Brittain33]

"Necessary and proper" is almost universally disdained as a road to saving the mandate. Using that prong would justify almost anything. So we are left with the fuzzy line test based on how big the elephant is. And everything we do affects commerce - from the moment we are born. Once you have two people whose activities affect one another, you have commerce. And in an economy where there are not fifty wholly autarkic economies in each state, it affects interstate commerce. So are are back to the issue of the final interment of federalism, putting aside whether or not the fuzzy line test has any attraction to enough Justices who are not quite ready to arrange for the burial service.

You seem to be arguing that since everything can be regulated as interstate commerce, nothing can be.

[Brittain33]

Well, if the judges decide to overturn this law by a 5-4 margin, the only significant binding precedent will have been Bush v. Gore for having led to the current composition of the Supreme Court. Schade.

[Brittain33]

Well, if the judges decide to overturn this law by a 5-4 margin, the only significant binding precedent will have been Bush v. Gore for having led to the current composition of the Supreme Court. Schade.

It's clear the mandate will be overturned by this court, and considering the majority of Americans want it to go down, a 5-4 split would be ideal for GOP arguments in Nov 2012 - "if you want Obamacare, just give Obama another 4 years to shift the balance of the court."

It's true, Kennedy and Roberts may be considering how difficult Romney's path to the White House will be if the mandate he championed in Massachusetts remains in place. If they can overturn it, that removes a major obstacle to united conservative support for him in his race against Obama.

[Brittain33]

Well, if the judges decide to overturn this law by a 5-4 margin, the only significant binding precedent will have been Bush v. Gore for having led to the current composition of the Supreme Court. Schade.

It's clear the mandate will be overturned by this court, and considering the majority of Americans want it to go down, a 5-4 split would be ideal for GOP arguments in Nov 2012 - "if you want Obamacare, just give Obama another 4 years to shift the balance of the court."

It's true, Kennedy and Roberts may be considering how difficult Romney's path to the White House will be if the mandate he championed in Massachusetts remains in place. If they can overturn it, that removes a major obstacle to united conservative support for him in his race against Obama.

You don't really think that do you Brittain33 do you?  I mean if I were them, I would consider that an incredibly insulting comment - suggesting that they have no ethics at all, and no compunction against abusing the power of their office.

Do you think they are insulated from political considerations and a view of the greater good they are working toward? I don't. Scalia in particularly has swam comfortably in political waters. I imagine if we had a liberal majority on the Court in 2000, Bush v. Gore would have been decided differently, too.