The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard arguments on President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, which would extend health insurance to 30 million Americans.
The question is whether the high court will strike down the core provision that mandates all Americans have health insurance. The court’s decision is expected in June.
The court’s decision is expected to be decided mainly along partisan lines.
Republican opponents contend the law unconstitutionally extends the power of the federal government by requiring that all Americans buy insurance or face a penalty.
Republicans have coined the Affordable Care Act “Obamacare,” and have used fear mongering and distortion to try to link the law to rationing, soaring costs, unemployment and death panels.
But the fact is so-called Obamacare is not much different than Romneycare or what Mitt Romney enacted when he was governor of Massachusetts; both require individuals to buy health insurance.
Despite the hysteria over the insurance mandate provision in the Affordable Care Act it “has its roots in conservative thinking,” as an article in the New York Times recently pointed out.
“The concept that people should be required to buy health insurance was fleshed out more than two decades ago by a number of conservative economists, embraced by scholars at conservative research groups, including the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute and championed, for a time, by Republicans in the Senate,” reported Michael Cooper of the New York Times on Feb. 14.
“The individual mandate, as it is known, was seen then as the conservative alternative to some of the health care approaches favored by liberals—like creating a national health service or requiring employers to provide health coverage.”
The irony is now Republicans and conservatives oppose the individual mandate.
While they claim their opposition is based on conservative principles it is really motivated by politics.
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)