A Landmark Ruling on Health Care

The Supreme Court last week issued its decision on the constitutionality of the health care law: its 5-4 ruling means the 2,700-page piece of legislation is officially the law of the land. Until and unless it is repealed, it's the law we have to live with. Yet it's important to keep the Justices' ruling in perspective. They said this law was constitutional. They did not say it was good policy. Their ruling doesn't change the fact we are left with a law projected to cost $2.6 trillion; increase premiums for family plans by more than $2,000; result in 800,000 fewer jobs due to new mandates; and cut $500 billion from Medicare. That's clearly bad policy and why I believe we should redouble our efforts to repeal it.
Some would tell you the best way forward is to keep the law and improve it by amending only certain parts. This is not realistic for two main reasons.
First, though the law's supporters may say they're open to this idea, recent experience suggests this is far from the case. Think of my effort last year to repeal the law's 1099 tax reporting mandate. It took nine months and seven votes in Congress before enough senators could finally be swayed to set politics aside and repeal it. Imagine the resistance to changing even larger and costlier parts of the law.
Second, the law is simply too fundamentally flawed to be fixed by patching it up here and there. The Obama Administration's own experts on Medicare and Medicaid make this clear: the growth of private health insurance premiums, these experts say, will more than double because of the law. Medicare, currently projected to become insolvent in just 12 years, will be slashed by $500 billion to fund a new entitlement program. Lastly, the 159 new boards and more than 13,000 pages of new regulations created by the law will put Washington bureaucrats between patients and their doctors.
These realities and more make the law flawed beyond repair. It must be replaced not with another gargantuan law, but with step-by-step reforms which actually bring down health care costs without further bloating state and federal budgets. Surely we don't need to bankrupt future generations to improve our health care system.
Fortunately the Supreme Court ruled part of the law unconstitutional. States won't be forced to adhere to the Medicaid expansion; Nebraska could reject this costly expansion without the threat of Congress withholding all of its Medicaid funding. The Court additionally held Congress cannot use the Commerce Clause to force individuals into economic activity, setting a critical precedent for the future. Unfortunately, the Court still ruled Congress can impose new taxes on your family as a way of compelling you to purchase a government-approved product – in this case.
This is a dangerous precedent to set and underscores further why this law is bad policy. Repealing the law, though a difficult task as long as its supporters control the Senate and occupy the White House, continues to be a top priority for me and the majority of Americans who oppose it.