Obamacare Is Here To Stay

At the gym today, I climbed the stairmaster and noticed that the television was on CNN, and their top story was the Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell. The decision that saved Obamacare. Mitch McConnell went to the podium to announce that the G.O.P. would continue to try to repeal the law, but I don't think he believes his own rhetoric.

What puzzled me was the fact that I felt nothing, as I watched the celebration unfold on TV, and saw the glee on Jeffrey Toobin's face. I usually feel angry when Democrats win one. But I didn't even feel surprise. During this Court's present term, my best-case scenario was a win in King v. Burwell, and a loss in Obergefell v. Hodges, the gay marriage case. My absence of emotion upon learning today's decision compelled me to search for my personal interpretation of the ruling.

It's still early, but I think what the decision means is that the Democratic Party has complete ownership of the law. I happen to think it is a bad law. Abraham Lincoln once said that "the best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly."

In some insurance markets, premiums are expected to increase by up to 51 percent. That's because the risk pool is older and sicker than expected. Democrats own each and every premium rate increase, and this should be hung like an albatross around the party's neck.

Democrats also own high deductibles. The lower-tier bronze and silver plans have more reasonable premiums, but costly yearly deductibles. A study by Health Pocket estimated that the average deductible for 2015 Bronze-level policies, the lowest tiered plan, is about $5,181 for individuals. Therefore, the bronze plan is quite reasonable, unless you actually plan on consuming medical services.

It's hard for me to feel contempt for Chief Justice Roberts, even though his comment that "the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase" sets a dangerous precedent. What liberal hasn't argued that the "context" of the Second Amendment are references to musketry and state militias?

Roberts also said that "Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them." Wait, what? I thought Congress wanted to improve health care outcomes? Every single disappointing health care outcome forever, every sick kid who couldn't find a Medicare provider, every patient that is left in a hospital corridor to die, are now the responsibility of the Democratic Party.

I think the G.O.P. should abandon talk of repeal. We got beat. Time to move on. Better to introduce bills that reform the ACA. Tort reform, allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, provisions to get more doctors into the supply pipeline. Otherwise, the law might collapse under it's own weight, and usher in a single-payer system. That is the ultimate goal of supporters of the ACA anyway, even if most of them only admit it to themselves.

I wonder if this unwieldy law, two-legged stool that it is, is so bad that Roberts believes it will fail anyway. Somehow Roberts must understand that the ACA doesn't improve markets, it distorts them. The person who consumes medical services now has even more layers of insurance and government apparatchiks between them and their provider than ever before. Maybe Roberts is just crazy like a fox.