‘Obamacare’: If it’s overturned...

President Obama’s health-care law has had its day in court, said Julie Rovner in NPR.org, and it went badly enough that its supporters are now “thinking the unthinkable”: What if the Supreme Court overturns “the entire Affordable Care Act?” If that happens, the political impact on the presidential race could be like an 8.0 earthquake—and the consequences for the nation’s health-care system would be just as profound. More than 5 million seniors who’ve received prescription drug rebates under the law might have to repay the money. The 18- to 26-year-olds covered by their parents’ health plans would become uninsured. Changes to Medicare rules and payments would be erased, leaving doctors and hospitals in an uproar. The predictions of most experts “generally range from ‘God only knows’ to ‘bedlam’ to ‘chaos.’”

A partial rejection of the bill would be “the worst possible outcome,” said Matthew O’Brien in TheAtlantic.com. If the court overturns the so-called “individual mandate” but leaves the rest of the bill intact, insurers would have to offer reasonably priced coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions, but without the mandated premiums of new, healthy customers to offset the cost. Such a scenario would send everyone’s premiums soaring, and leave the industry on the brink of collapse. That’s why the court might strike down the mandate and the popular insurance reforms, said Jennifer Haberkorn in Politico.com. If that happens, the Republicans who led the charge to scrap the health-care bill will face intense pressure “to find some way of enacting those insurance reforms without the mandate.”

One way or another, our health-care system has to be restructured, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, it will return the health-care system to its “ruinously expensive” status quo, with uncontrolled cost increases, 50 million “free riders” getting their health care in emergency rooms, and insurance companies ruthlessly denying coverage to the sick. That may set the country on the road to conservatives’ worst nightmare: a “single payer” system of nationalized health care. Dream on, said Ramesh Ponnuru in Bloomberg.com. In this center-right country, two thirds of voters want the individual mandate overturned, and Republicans would never acquiesce to a European-style health-care system. Unless Democrats somehow achieve total control over Washington, “getting single payer through Congress would be almost impossible.”

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