Supreme Court to rule on Obama’s health plan

What happened

The Supreme Court agreed this week to hear a constitutional challenge to President Obama’s health-care reform law just months before the 2012 election. Oral arguments will likely be held in March, and the justices are expected to make a final decision by June. The core issue facing the court will be the constitutionality of the law’s centerpiece—the requirement that every American buy health insurance starting in 2014 or face a fine. The administration argues that the mandate is authorized by the Commerce Clause, which allows the federal government to regulate economic activity related to interstate commerce. “We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, and are confident the Supreme Court will agree,” said White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer.

The lawsuit brought by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business, however, claims the Commerce Clause does not give the government authority to force individuals to buy private products like health insurance. “In both public surveys and at the ballot box, Americans have rejected the law’s mandate,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. “I hope the Supreme Court will do the same.”

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What the editorials said

This will be “the most politically freighted decision the court has faced since Bush v. Gore in 2000,” said the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. The Affordable Care Act provides coverage to the 50 million Americans who currently are uninsured. The mandate is necessary because the ACA bans insurers from refusing applicants with pre-existing conditions. If the court strikes down the individual mandate, “freeloaders could wait until illness strikes, then buy a policy to cover their bills”—causing health-care reform to collapse, and premiums to soar.

This case is about more than health care, said The Wall Street Journal. If the justices rule that the individual mandate is constitutional, then the government would be free to order citizens to buy anything it deems good for them. “And make no mistake: Future governments would order specific ‘commercial’ activity under this authority.” They could demand, for instance, that citizens buy broccoli, or domestic cars. The Supreme Court must strike down this gross overreach of federal power, before it’s too late.

What the commentators said

The signs look good for an Obama win, said Massimo Calabresi in Time.com. In an appeals court decision that upheld the mandate last week, Judge Laurence Silberman, a Reagan appointee, wrote that Congress must “be free to forge national solutions to national problems.” That followed “an equally devastating opinion” by another conservative federal appeals court judge, former Antonin Scalia clerk Jeffrey Sutton, who wrote that health care “has few (if any) parallels in modern life,” and that the federal government’s attempts to extend coverage should not be impeded by the courts. There’s also a clear legal precedent for compelling people to buy health insurance, said Einer Elhauge in The New York Times. “Check your paystub” and you’ll see that money has been deducted for Medicare, whether or not you wanted to join that particular government health-insurance scheme.

I wouldn’t be so confident, said Grace-Marie Turner in NationalReview.com. When a federal appeals court in Florida ruled against the mandate in August, it said it “could find no precedent for a mandate on individuals to purchase government-approved health insurance.” Even during national emergencies such as the Great Depression and World War II, the court noted, Congress had never ordered Americans to buy particular products, like wheat or war bonds. History, and the law, stands against Obamacare.

Whatever the Supreme Court decides, it will have a big impact on the 2012 election, said Chris Cillizza in The Washington Post. If the court throws out the individual mandate, Republicans will get a big boost in their effort to persuade independent voters that Obama is an extremist who has engaged in egregious “overreach.” But if the justices affirm the law’s constitutionality, it’s the GOP that will look extremist. “The health-care law has come to define the first term of Obama’s presidency.” It could now play a deciding role in whether he wins a second term.