The Supreme Court Ruling on "Obamacare"

There are still plenty of things that I would like to write in this blog in the near future. There is the Euro 2012 Finals coming up on Sunday, and I would like to write a preview for that one. There is a review of Fiona Apple's new disk, as well as a review of a concert I am scheduled to attend tomorrow. There is the continuation of book reviews for "The Story of B" and "Touch the Earth". Further on down the line, I will write a review on the autobiography of Johnny Rotten, as well. Also, there are a few other ideas that I have been bouncing around.

However, there was some big news that came out earlier today. I am assuming tht everyone knows what that is, of course.

The Supreme Court ruled today on the constitutionality of the President's proposed health care reforms, often dubbed "Obamacare". Specifically, it ruled in favor of "Obamacare", if you will. It actually ruled on the constitutionality of certain aspects, and just about all of it was preserved.

Almost all conservatives in the country were opposed, often vehemently, violently opposed to this measure. When Obama first seriously proposed it, you may remember that people marched in the streets of Washington and slapped a Hitler moustache on a picture of Obama, obviously suggesting parallels to Obama as a dictator.

Most conservatives seemed sure that this challenge to Obamacare would work. The Supreme Court has a 5-4 majority of justices who were brought in during conservative Republican administrations, after all. It seemed a cynch, and many figured this was in the bag. After all, government cannot force it's citizens to purchase something, and that is what Obamacare seemed to do, right?

But the court decided otherwise, and of all people, it was Justice Roberts who cast the deciding vote, the swing vote. Most had assumed the deciding vote would have been from Justice Kennedy, but he decided with the minority in this case, favoring striking down Obamacare. It was Justice Roberts who ultimately cast the deciding vote, and upheld the policy.

Many conservative are seething.

Here is the thing, though: we are the only industrialized country in the world where citizens have to worry about not being able to afford medical care if they get sick or injured. As of right now, the still includes children, and I never understood how people can justify that. Yet, conservatives apparently do.

Yes, I am aware of their arguments. It's a government handout, and thus encourages people to be lazy and rely on a bloated government bureaucracy. We cannot afford it – have you seen the budget deficit and the national debt lately? It's inviting more government control into our lives, limiting our personal freedom to choose for ourselves. It will raise our taxes for something that surely will not work.

Mitt Romney has declared that his very first act as President would be to repeal Obamacare. That would probably be considerably more involved than he is making it out to be, since there would obviously be strong opposition to this measure. Yet, it is a measure of just how unpopular this policy is right now that Romney is trying to gain the White House by appealing against it.

I have mentioned before that this particular issue – that is, affordable healthcare – is one of the key issues that I always identified as one of the more transparently right or wrong positions. In the eighties, it seemed to me to be right there along with apartheid in South Africa – a position you could hardly justify if you favored the wrong way. I wrote a piece already in this blog fairly recently ("The Criminalization of Affordable Healthcare in America", April 6, 2012), and it is an issue that I always followed with avid interest. I remember President Clinton holding up a pen, threatening that he would use that very pen to veto any measures that were not up to his precise specifications. We all remember what happened there – he backed down.

It is an issue that everyone seems to back down in, in the face of such incredible and angry opposition. As I mentioned in that previous blog entry, there is a system of so-called "socialized medicine" in place in literally every other industrialized nation in the world. I put that in quotes because it should be noted that there really is not one single definition of "socialized medicine". Each country has it's own system, and they differ from country to country. Only Americans lump all these diverse approaches to affordable healthcare into one easy label, all the better to dismiss it with, and favor, as Amricans always seem to do, that peculiar notion of "American exceptionalism".

So, indeed, The United States is the exception in the industrialized world, as the only nation that does not provide it's citizens affordable healthcare options. The most recent nation to adapt such a system should be enough to raise some eyebrows as well: South Africa. Yes, that's right. In the 1980's (not all that long ago, actually), the United States shared this dubious distinction with South Africa, the officially racist, white minority ruled nation that served largely as an embarrassment to the Western nations. Now, we stand alone, and for all the wrong reasons.

I have already mentioned in that previous blog entry that not a single other nation opted to scrap their system in favor of what Americans have, although Canadian Prime Minister Harper toyed with the idea. But there was such staunch opposition in Canada  -and what foreign nation knows the perils of the American system better than Canadians? They are our next door neighbors, and who get our news coverage and have met many Americans, among them those who flock to Canadian borders in order to pick up drugs and such that are more affordable in Canada, where there exists price regulations to keep this stuff affordable.

Many conservative likened Obamacare to "socialized medicine". But this is far from the case. In fact, Obamacare was a modest measure to make healthcare more fair and accessible, at best. There is still a long way to go. We will still have tens of millions of uninsured, and there will not be anything like strong price regulations in place. It also forces the uninsured to buy a private insurance policy, or face penalties, thus in effect, actually allowing these corporate health care providers to grow, to expand their market. There are other weaknesses with the system, for that matter. I cannot stress enough how modest some of these improvements are – but improvements they are, nonetheless. It is a step in the right direction and, overall, good for Americans, even if most Americans do not seem to recognize it.

It truly baffles me, how strong the opposition to affordable healthcare is in this country. I never understood it. How can you justify being in favor of healthcare that most people cannot afford? How can you justify medication in the country that s producing the pills and such to be not only more expensive, but far more expensive, than they are when exported to countries with price regulations? That is why people flock to Canada, to get things cheaper there than they are here – and the bulk of these medicines are made right here in the States! That sickens me, and it really is a wonder to me how more Americans are not offended by that, with all of their conspiracy theories and apparent anger.

For that matter, how can people justify such a high burden to pay, quite literally, for those who are literally the least fortunate among us? It is a gamble, after all, is it not? Unless you are indeed wealthy, or have an incredible, exceptional healthcare program, chances are you simply cannot afford to get seriously sick, or to obtain some rare disease, or to get hit by a bus or get some other serious injury that impairs your ability to work. Or, simply, to grow old. It is baffling, perplexing, that Americans seem so intolerant of perceived abuses by the invisible phantom of inept government bureaucracies running a monopoly on healthcare, while the real life abuses of private healthcare providers and drug manufacturers go largely unnoticed, time and time and time again. On top of it, these people think that they are extremely sharp and watchful of the government that is elected by the people, all the while allowing corporations elected by no one to exercise all sorts of power over their lives. Not only that, but it actually works in other countries – at least better, and I would argue far better, than it works here! It really is amazing, and tragic, when you stop to think about it.

But few ever seem to truly stop and think about it.

I will share a story with you here. I once worked at a mall – it does not matter what mall – a number of years ago. We are talking well over a decade ago now. A woman, she seemed middle-aged, but maybe a bit older, it was hard to tell, in a store fell down the stairs. I did not see the accident, but I saw her lying face down at the base of the stairs, seriously injured and unable to really move. The ambulance came, and what happened next just horrified me, and cemented my opposition to the privatized system that we now have in place in this country. The emergency responders knelt down next to the woman – she was lying face down – and asked her where her insurance card was. Was it in her wallet, and was that in her purse? Could she give them permission to rummage through her bag, in order to get the card?

Here was this poor woman - again she could not move and was in obvious pain – and yet she was being asked all of these questions. It took a good couple of minutes, and they must have been excruciating for her. A crowd had gathered to watch, and that must have added to her discomfort. Surely, she just wanted to be taken into the ambulance and to a hospital by that point, yet she had to wait for them to go through her personal belongings in order to obtain the information that they needed.

Such episodes should not happen, and they illustrate precisely what is wrong with healthcare in America. Are you worried about inept and bureaucratic, inhuman, government dominated healthcare? What about the inhuman, and very bureaucratic, aspects of the privatized healthcare already in place? Would it not be better, for all parties involved in such a case as the one I just described, for the woman to be taken to a hospital without delay, and for those details to be worked out later? She was in need, she was desperate, compromised and helpless. Yet, she was made to wait, until it was determined what policy she had, and perhaps which doctors or hospital she could be directed to. It was a sad episode to witness, and shook me up. I almost get shivers just thinking about it even still.

Yet, this was a rich mall. Believe me, few people go there except those who can afford to, and that probably excludes you, the reader, as it certainly excluded me, then and now (I only worked there, never really shopped there).

The system that we have in place does not work, simply stated. Getting angry and ignoring that fact and breathing fire because some politicians want to change that does not make this system right. I do not belong to either major party. In fact, I actively avoid them, and view them both with a high degree of skepticism. I try my best to avoid them come election day – although I do vote!

That said, the healthcare system here is so wrong, so unfair, that something needs to be done. I have my problems with President Obama and his policies and overall image, but at least this was something to address the inherent unfairness. It does not correct everything, and in fact, as stated earlier, does not go nearly far enough in my opinion. But it is something, and it should help to make healthcare more fair and affordable, overall. With all of this talk of freedom, Obamacare essentially is designed to allow those who are not rich (the majority of us, in other words, who cannot afford to shop in that mall that I used to work in), to be able to gain access to better healthcare. It is an improvement, however modest, and it is far, far from anything remotely resembling "socialized medicine". The story might not be over yet (again, opposition is strong and, in my opinion, too blinded by anger to be rational), but this is overall a step up from what was in place – what remains in place in fact, until 2014.

For that, I applaud this President, while also keeping in mind just how modest these reforms were, and I also applaud the Supreme Court, because I was kind of half-expecting them to strike it down. Whether Roberts will pay some price for crossing party or ideological lines remains to be seen. But what he did agree or disagree, he did based on his understanding of constitutional law, and not because he was either in favor, or opposed, to the policy itself. I am not entirely sure that the other justices can say the same thing, pro or con.

For that, perhaps this should be recognized as a victory for the American legal system, as well.