Food For Thought As We Await The Supreme Court Ruling
I had the pleasure of spending time yesterday with Wendell Potter, both for a one-on-one interview and listening to him speak at the annual fund-raising dinner for Health Care for All Minnesota . Look for our July Progressive Profile to feature information and insights from my one-on-one as Potter discusses today's health care environment and his book Deadly Spin , from which he read last night in St. Paul to a crowd of more than 200 single payer enthusiasts.
Single payer is the primary focus of Health Care for All Minnesota. Single payer is becoming a popular topic again as we await the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Health Care Act. Robert Scheer recently wrote a blog entitled: Health Care: Give The People What They Want (Medicare for all). Polls continue to show people favor single payer/Medicare for All/public options/something other than the current system. So of course that means -- drum roll please -- real health care reform, no matter what the Supreme Court rules, has an ice cube's chance in hell of moving forward soon.
Wearing Brave Face, Obama Braces for Health Care Ruling
By JODI KANTOR
Late on Tuesday, March 27, halfway around the world, President Obama began one of the most suspenseful waits in recent presidential history.
After a blur of nuclear security meetings in South Korea, Mr. Obama settled into the Air Force One conference room to read a summary aides had written of that day’s arguments before the Supreme Court back in Washington. The justices had asked deeply skeptical questions about his health care law.
Mr. Obama’s most profound policy achievement was at much higher risk of defeat than his aides had expected, vulnerable to being erased by the margin of a single justice’s vote.
Since then, Mr. Obama and the White House have put on brave faces, insisting that the law and the mandate at its center will be upheld when the court rules this month. In private conversations, they predict that the bulk of the law will survive even if the mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance does not.
But even if the White House is a fortress of message discipline, it cannot disguise the potential heartbreak for Mr. Obama, who managed to achieve a decades-old Democratic dream despite long odds and at steep cost.
If he loses both his law and re-election, many will conclude “that he bet on his major reform, and the Supreme Court defeated it, and he lost his hold on the presidency,” Robert Dallek, the presidential historian, said in an interview.
On the day the ruling comes out, one Obama adviser joked, “I might have to clean out my sock drawer.”
Supporters Slow to Grasp Health Law’s Legal Risks
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — With the Supreme Court likely to render judgment on President Obama’s health care law this week, the White House and Congress find themselves in a position that many advocates of the legislation once considered almost unimaginable.
In passing the law two years ago, Democrats entertained little doubt that it was constitutional. The White House held a conference call to tell reporters that any legal challenge, as one Obama aide put it, “will eventually fail and shouldn’t be given too much credence in the press.”
Congress held no hearing on the plan’s constitutionality until nearly a year after it was signed into law. Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, scoffed when a reporter asked what part of the Constitution empowered Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance. “Are you serious?” she asked with disdain. “Are you serious?”
Opponents of the health plan were indeed serious, and so was the Supreme Court, which devoted more time to hearing the case than to any other in decades. A White House that had assumed any challenge would fail now fears that a centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s presidency may be partly or completely overturned on a theory that it gave little credence. The miscalculation left the administration on the defensive as its legal strategy evolved over the last two years.
“It led to some people taking it too lightly,” said a Congressional lawyer who like others involved in drafting the law declined to be identified before the ruling. “It shouldn’t strike anybody as a close call,” the lawyer added, but “given where we are now, do I wish we had focused even more on this? I guess I would say yes.”
Health law’s mandate valid, professors say
Few in poll think court will allow it
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court should uphold a law requiring most Americans to have health insurance if the justices follow legal precedent, according to 19 of 21 constitutional law professors who ventured an opinion on the most-anticipated ruling in years.
Only eight of them predicted the court would do so.
Care reform ruling will touch many in MaineCritics dislike having to insure short-term workers; backers cite coverage for children under 26.The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on the fate of the Affordable Care Act, the sweeping 2010 health care reform law also known informally as "Obamacare." http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=Care+reform+ruling+will+touch+many+in+Maine&urlID=482610911&action=cpt&partnerID=561087&cid=160128805&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pressherald.com%2Fnews%2Fcare-reform-ruling-will-touch-many-in-maine_2012-06-24.html |
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