Obamacare and the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is due to issue it's ruling on Obama's healthcare reform acts or "Obamacare" at the end of June and the results of the ruling can be devastating to many.

According to Reuters, there are 60,000 Americans who are currently receiving care from the Pre-Exisiting Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) that was created by President Obama. Before healthcare reform, these conditions would not be covered by health insurance companies and people would have to pay for vital, expensive healthcare services on their own.

If the Supreme Court were to overturn these reforms, thousands of Americans like Sam Lovett, who needed a $400,000 organ transplant that would not have been possible without the PCIP, are going to die. Some members of the Supreme Court may believe it is unconstitutional for government to regulate the healthcare industry, but it is more constitutional to protect our natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Mitt Romney says he would repeal Obamacare on day one, but does he not realize that there are thousands of Americans like his wife who have pre-existing conditions that healthcare companies would otherwise not pay for. Of course he does not, Mitt Romney is a millionaire who can easily afford to pay for his wife's necessary medical services. By opposing Obamacare Mitt Romney is once again catering to the wealthy who can afford treatment while punishing the middle class who cannot.

Because of the partisan nature of the court, the ruling lies in the hands of Justice Kennedy, who has ruled on both the Democratic side as well as the Republican side on many issues. Unfortunately, he has more often than not ruled on the conservative side of the issue and so Obamacare may not make it through the court.

Justice Kennedy also repeatedly used an analogy of forcing somebody to buy healthcare as forcing somebody to eat broccoli but there are two problems with this analogy. The first is that nobody is going to be forced to buy healthcare there will just be a tax penalty for those who choose not to. The constitution gives government the power to tax and spend so this is entirely within its bounds. The second problem is that there are not "broccoli emergency rooms" where somebody who does not eat broccoli can receive emergency treatment at the expense of the hospital.

Healthcare reform is necessary both to increase the access to affordable health care for average Americans as well as to protect hospitals from being stuck with the bill when patients come in who don't have health care. So the decision rests with the court now; do they want to please the conservatives -- who, by the way, previously supported healthcare reform as long as healthcare remained privatized (which it does in Obamacare) -- or do they want to protect the American people and American hospitals.