Obamacare survives and it is a win for the good guys! Certainly Obamacare is not the end of the line, but am hoping that progressives will finally look at this as an opportunity to launch an effort to make Obamacare better. The AP-GfK took a poll recently that noted that if Obamacare was overturned, Americans did not want their government to give up on reining in health care costs and issues. To me, that looks like opportunity, for a public option, for single-payer — as long as it gets closer to better control of costs and getting better outcomes for it. But it is time to step up and push for useful revisions to Obamacare before the wingnuts sell everybody on something stupid like buying cheap insurance (that really isn’t insurance) from Texas.
You can go over to Upworthy and gloat over the best Drudge Front Page in a while.
SCOTUSBlog first blog post on the decision.
OK!
Jonathan Cohn has his first take on the decision.
The justices actually issued three decisions. The four liberals effectively embraced the government’s arguments in defense of the law. Four conservative dissenters rejected the government’s arguments. The deciding vote came not from Justice Anthony Kennedy, who led the dissents, but from Chief Justice John Roberts. He rejected arguments that the mandate was a permissible use of federal authority to regulate interstate commerce. But he said that the mandate was effectively the same as a tax and, as a result, passed constitutional muster.
Fox and CNN jump the gun on SCOTUS reporting:
(The embed code doesn’t seem to be working for me, sorry, but this video is well worth the 2 minutes to watch it. Put down all liquids first.)
Burn!
What else interests you today?