Pirate's Cove

Awwwwwww, what a shame

(The Hill) A Supreme Court decision striking down President Obama’s healthcare law would be a blow not just to Obama, but to the decades-long push for universal healthcare.

As most realize, that is what ObamaCare is about: a step towards putting the federal government in charge of the health care decisions of 300,000,000+ Americans. It doesn’t work very well in nations with a fraction of the US’s population, and would be worse here, where the federal government is barely responsive to The People as it is.

Universal coverage has been a staple of the progressive movement since Theodore Roosevelt ran for president. To finally realize that dream, only to have it taken away just two years later, would be an especially bitter defeat even for a movement that has seen its share of disappointment.

They’ve seen their share of disappointment because the majority of Americans realize that Progressives stand for Big Government tyranny and not only intrusion, but control of individual lives.

The politics of healthcare are already treacherous. Democrats lost the House in 1994 partly because they failed to pass a healthcare bill, then lost it again in 2010 because they succeeded. Now the Supreme Court could help deny Obama a second term while also wiping out the policy that came at such a steep price.

It’s so treacherous that Democrats mostly avoided discussing ObamaCare in the run-up to the 2010 midterms, and are mostly ignoring it now. Poll after poll show that the American People do like a few parts of the bill, but are mostly against the whole thing, which they deem goes way too far, interfering with their health care decisions, involves the federal government too much, and will raise costs and cause their companies to drop their insurance offerings. And the darned sure do not like the federal government forcing them to purchase health insurance or be fined.

If that happens, it’s easy to see why elected officials might view healthcare as a bad use of political capital.

“It will make the process of providing healthcare for the American people even more difficult,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who leads the House Progressive Caucus.

And there’s part of the problem: Progressives think they it’s the job of the government to provide healthcare, even if it means that the healthcare quality will be reduced and waiting times will increase exponentially, just like in countries with socialized healthcare systems. They think it’s their job to be daddy for everyone and make the decisions.

There’s no way the Mandate stands. Obviously, most of the Liberals will ignore the Constitution and the horrible arguments from Obama’s lawyers in front of the Supreme Court and vote to uphold the Mandate. The federal government was never meant to have this much power, as the Framers knew that such an all-encompassing federal government would be unresponsive to the American people, hence the reason most of the power was reserved for the States and the People. Remember, most of the original states were the size of most European countries. That’s why they are called “states”. As in “nation-states”. As in “chief of state”.