Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

So is today's Supreme Court ruling a victory for Obama? I think it is more of a blessing in disguise for Romney. As I wrote before, whichever side loses in this ruling will be galvanized for the November election. Romney already has seen contributions to his campaign jumped today. He now can complain about Obama care for the rest of the campaign whereas if the law was struck down it will not be an issue for him at all. He says he will repeal the law the day he takes office. Of course it won't be that easy even if Republicans win the senate also. Remember filibuster? Of course there is the little problem that Romney care was the blueprint of Obama care even to the letter of individual mandate. Now Romney says that he may keep provisions like no turning people away for preexisting conditions while doing away with individual mandate. It is obvious that won't work because of there is no individual mandate but you can get insurance even if you have preexisting conditions, then you would not get insurance until you are sick!

Obama care is not a great piece of legislation. But due to pull from both sides it was the only thing that could have passed. There was no upside politically for Obama. Most people have insurance so it is hard to get a majority of people to understand that reform of healthcare is absolutely necessary. Given the main goal of Republicans is to defeat Obama, this big legislation is certainly a target for the Republicans to shoot at. Of course if they have no ideas of their own that is politically viable so they don't even try. Witness Paul Ryan's idea of trying to reform Medicare, Democrats didn't even have to attack it. The Republicans' idea to improve the insurance situation is to let people buy insurance out of state! Yeah, that is really going to make a difference.

With all the Republican arguing about government interference in health care, did they not remember their roles in increasing government's role? It was Reagan who signed into law that mandate hospitals to treat people walking into ER even if they can't pay. You know somebody has to pay for that care or hospitals would go out of business. So hospitals charge people who have money more and try to get more out of private insurance. Government also has to subsidized hospitals with lots of uninsured patients or many would have gone out of business. This mandate for hospitals was supported by both Republicans and Democrats. George Bush also enacted the prescription drug law which caused billions of taxpayers money and which enriched the drug companies and insurance companies that run the program. So Republicans are like the old people who put up signs like "Keep the government out of my Medicare." It is laughable.

I don't know if health care if a right. After all if you have no water or food you will die quicker than if you don't have a doctor but water and food are not free. But if the majority say that health care is a right then we can't have these patch work of insurances and mandates. We have the best trained doctors and best technologies in the world but we are mediocre in life expectancy and infant mortality. So even if you have insurance right now you know the system is broke and needs major overhaul. So it is time to stop the bickering and try to improve Obama care instead.

By the way, even though John Robert's decisions was a complete surprise, LA Times had predicted that it was a possibility because one of his friends who sits on the Appeals Court in Washington had upheld the law with the same tax reasoning. That judge was also a Bush appointee.