If you want repeal, you can no longer rationalize a fantasy that the Supreme Court will do your heavy lifting for you. You’ve got to get out and elect candidates who will repeal it

Considering nearly 3/4 of all Americans want it repealed and they haven’t been hit by it yet, I’d say the electoral environment just got a lot friendlier for those who pledge repeal, and a lot more hostile to those opposed.

You think someone in favor of repeal is *only* going to repeal Obamacare, think again. Even if we don’t win enough of this coming election for repeal, it only gets worse for the Obamacare supporters from here on out. There is no doubt in any economist’s mind precisely what it is going to do to the economy.

Finally, whatever else John Roberts has done today, this is the first acknowledgment *in law* that government imposed taxes and costs of regulation are taxes. This may be the greatest Trojan Horse in history – and the four liberal justices signed off on it.

Not to mention the ruling on the Medicaid funds, which is going to put a real spike in the federal government’s ability to *force* states to comply.

This could be Progressivism’s high water mark, as well as a Pyrrhic victory of epic propertions. Yes, they hold the field for now. But a generation later, Rome had conquered Pyrrhus’ homeland

In fact, as luck would have it, right now Rush Limbaugh is playing on his show the tape of Obama (I think from the 2008 campaign) where Obama is talking to supporters and says that in his first term he will pass a health insurance law that will have some of the characteristics he wants, but won’t yet eliminate employer-provided health insurance. He says that will happen later–give it perhaps 10 years.

I just found a link to it. It was actually in 2007, addressing the SEIU:

OBAMA 2007: My commitment is to make sure that we’ve got universal health care for all Americans by the end of my first term as president. I would hope that we can set up a system that allows those who can go through their employer to access a federal system or a state pool of some sort. But I don’t think we’re gonna be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process. I can envision a decade out or 15 years out or 20 years out.

The problem is that legal rulings are complex, and this one certainly is. The distinction between commerce clause powers and taxation powers may be clear to us, but to most people all this will mean is “Obamacare was upheld, therefore it’s a victory for Obama.”

And that’s the way the MSM is spinning it, of course. People often read headlines and not much else. Here’s a typical headline that blurs the distinction: “Supreme Court upholds Obamacare individual mandate as a tax.” The article goes on to say in its first sentence, “In a victory for President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court upheld his signature health care law’s individual insurance mandate in a 5-4 decision, upending speculation after hostile-seeming oral arguments in March that the justices would overturn the law. “

It’s a tax in that if you don’t get insurance you pay a penalty which goes to the government, the idea being that with this stick, the young and healthy and cheap will compensate the insurance companies for having to cover the old, sick and expensive. So far, so good?

But this tax or penalty is peanuts compared to the cost of buying health insurance, so it’s cheaper to pay the tax and buy insurance only when you already have a medical problem, which the ACA will compel insurance companies to sell you no matter what.

This, as the law stands, is perfectly legal. But how can it not have the effect of swiftly bankrupting the insurance companies? Or was that the idea all along? that the govt would have to step in and “rescue” the health system?

So for those who want to nationalize healthcare, their plan is right on schedule.

It’s a victory.