Bidencare
The Supreme Court Thursday let Obamacare cheat death for the third time, beating back a challenge from states seeking to knock down the entire Jenga tower because the individual mandate has been removed. The ruling didn’t grapple with the substance of the argument because the case was decided on grounds of standing — meaning, the plaintiffs failed to establish that they were injured by an unlawful action — but the result is unmistakable: The most significant domestic policy achievement of the last 30 years, a significant expansion of the federal government’s power to manage and bar discrimination in health insurance markets, remains on the books.
The first reaction should be relief. Striking down the law would’ve increased the ranks of the uninsured by more than 20 million people, hitting especially hard low-income people who benefited from states’ expansion of Medicaid. That would be awful at any time, but positively criminal on the tail end of a pandemic, one in which millions lost their jobs and consequently their health insurance, and when even Republican politicians pushed for free, government-delivered testing and vaccination.
The second reaction should be to build on the Affordable Care Act. When Donald Trump was president, Republicans tried to dismantle the law legislatively, replacing it with an ugly sketch scrawled on the back of a hospital cafeteria napkin. That failed because John McCain had courage and a conscience.
As a candidate for president, Joe Biden said he would build on the landmark law by giving all Americans the opportunity to buy into “a public health insurance option like Medicare” while upping tax credits to lower premiums and offer coverage to more working people.
A public option is still the best way forward, supported by seven in 10 Americans. Republicans will howl “socialism,” just as they did when the ACA became law, but the nation will move closer to ensuring that the basic right to affordable health care is never contingent on one’s employment status or station in life.