Roberts to the rescue
There emerged in Washington on Thursday a powerful person who took a principled stand without regard to the rigid partisanship and winner-take-all ideological battling that consumes the nation’s capital. To the great good of America, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts crafted the deciding logic that upheld President Obama’s landmark health care reform legislation.
In so doing, Roberts stunned Republicans and Democrats alike, both of whom had presumed the judge to be securely in the anti-Obamacare camp. Instead, whatever his personal feelings about the program are, he found the law to be grounded in the Constitution.
That this was a shock stands as proof of how ruinously overheated American politics have become. Nothing is judged on the merits; everything is gauged by zombielike philosophical purity, regardless of practical pluses and minuses.
As responsible as anyone for the unyielding tenor of the debate, Obama should take a lesson from Roberts in how to bridge divides to promote the well-being of the republic and of its governing institutions.
The challenge to the President’s health care overhaul was the most significant, closely watched and charged case to come before the court since Bush v. Gore. At stake were the shape of the relationship between Americans and medicine, limits on the federal government’s power to order its citizens around and Obama’s reelection fortunes.
Worth noting is that, as a senator, Obama opposed Roberts’ confirmation to the court despite the judge’s extraordinarily high lawyerly qualifications. While no one doubted Roberts’ brilliance, Obama disqualified him on the ground that he “has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak.”
Now Roberts stands as savior of Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment. Deftly, he wrote an opinion that will prevent the feds from overreaching into American lives in the future — the primary concern of the court’s conservative bloc — while forming an alliance with a liberal wing that so ardently desired the result he gave them.
Importantly, Roberts managed also to shore up the court’s image as the least political of the government’s three branches by leading his fellow justices to show due deference to the acts of Congress. Wisely, he declared:
“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”
As for the law that the court upheld, Obama and the Democrats created a behemoth that demands reform — as would have been necessary had the court tossed out its central provisions.
The fatal ill of U.S. health care is rising costs. The President erred in failing to attack increasing expenses before extending coverage to 30 million people at a cost estimated at $1.7 trillion over a decade. Financed through tax increases and theoretical savings, the program exerts enormous weight on an already sagging economy.
Among the costs are hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid spending, including what would have been forced wallops to states including New York. The court ruled that Obama and the Democrats had improperly attempted to shove those bills down the states’ throats. Thus, it opened a potentially enormous hole at Obamacare’s heart.
There are marked upsides to the program; and for the price, there damn well ought to be.
As Americans heed the mandate that they must have health insurance or pay a penalty, the ranks of the uninsured should fall.
As states create exchanges for buying insurance, prices should drop, notably for the self-employed.
As new regulations take hold, Americans will get used to carrying children on parents’ policies until age 26, to being able to buy insurance regardless of preexisting conditions and to moving from job to job without fear of losing coverage.
There is likely no going back from any of that — despite GOP pledges, including by candidate Mitt Romney, to repeal Obamacare. The challenge for Obama and Romney remains to address both costs and benefits realistically.