Is the Supreme Court about to axe the entire health care initiative that dominated headlines in late 2009, caused many a Congressperson to lose their seat, and could have potentially saved millions of people from bankruptcy and/or getting denied health coverage just because they stubbed a toe last year? Sadly, it's not looking good for what the Right has delighted in calling Obamacare as Justice Kennedy appears to be siding with the conservatives on this one, and the justices today were sounding like the entire plan would have to be killed, not just pieces of it.
On the third and final day of arguments today, the justices were debating about whether the entire statute would need to fall if what's called the "individual mandate" would have to fall. It's now seeming inevitable that the mandate requiring all Americans to get health insurance or pay a penalty will be deemed unconstitutional, and the Obama Administration's lawyer, Edwin Needler, is arguing that other parts of the law, like the Medicaid expansion and subsidized health coverage for people with low incomes, could still stand.
Kneedler also argued before the court, "About 2.5 million young people under age 26 are on their parents' insurance now because of the new law. If it were struck down entirely, 2.5 million of them would be thrown off the insurance rolls."
We won't know until June what their final decision is, but with Kennedy saying the mandate is an "extreme proposition" and Scalia and the other conservatives sounding like they want to kill the whole thing, some are already sounding the death knell. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, trying to be a voice of compromise, said that the court had to decide whether to do a "salvage job" or a "wrecking operation" with the law.
Politically, James Carville says the court's decision to strike down the law will be "the best thing that has ever happened to the Democratic Party," and Frank Rich tells New York Magazine that it's a win-win for Obama, and after this the Republicans will own all the ills of the health care industry for the foreseeable future.
