I found the Robert Reich column, Reich: Political jujitsu to save health care law, at SFgate.
If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate in the new health law, private insurers will swarm Capitol Hill demanding that the law be amended to remove the requirement that they cover people with pre-existing conditions.
If this happens, Obama and the Democrats should say they’re willing to remove that requirement – but only if Medicare is available to all, financed by payroll taxes.
So I suppose I ought to withdraw my previous post Conservative Supreme Court Justices Inadvertently Make Case For Health Insurance Mandate before the justices realize that they have shot themselves in the foot. Now we’re supposed to want them to knock out the mandate so we can get our Medicare for all just as we really wanted.
Reich also notes,
Those who are opposing the law say a requirement that individuals contract with private insurance companies isn’t regulation of interstate commerce. It’s coercion of individuals.
I am still having a hard time figuring out why the Republicans and George Bush could pass a law to require everyone to buy prescription drug coverage from private insurance companies or pay stiffer penalties than those of Obamacare. That was constitutional but Obamacare is not?
One wonders how the brains of the conservative Justices of the Supreme court have suddenly stopped working. They ask silly question, pretending not to know the answers when the answers are obvious. They pretend that this law is unprecedented when just a few years ago the Congress and George Bush instituted a similar law.
If there is any place where we ought to make English the official language it is in the Supreme Court. They just don’t seem to know the meaning of some simple words like “logical”, “unprecedented”, “What is the difference between eating broccoli and bankrupting the country?” Maybe that is why they don’t know whether to shit or go blind.