Progressive Opinion

salon.com — To borrow the historic words of Vice President Joe Biden, Thursday’s Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Affordable Care Act was “a big fucking deal” for President Obama. (Or as Democratic National Committee political director Patrick Gaspard tweeted, “It’s constitutional. Bitches.”) Had the law been struck down, the president’s Republican enemies would have been shrieking about the socialist tyrant usurper who’d gotten his constitutional comeuppance by the country’s true leaders, the Republican Supreme Court majority. (Actually, I think that’s what Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent.) But for today’s decision to be a decisive political win for the president, he and Democrats have to get out and sell his historic healthcare accomplishment, hard.

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epi.org — The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is valuable legislation for a host of reasons, but most notably, it provides coverage for millions of Americans who would not have been able to secure insurance, and therefore, health care when they need it. The Supreme Court decision to uphold ACA was also important because it gives clarity and certainty to states and private industry that they should start preparing for the main provision to kick in in 2014. It resolves any uncertainty that was felt throughout the country by the important players, and now provides the necessary push for its implementation.

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thedailybeast.com — Stunning. There’s just no other way to say it. John Roberts, the fifth liberal? Actually, the decision gets a little more complicated than that in its details, but the bottom line is the bottom line: the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate — upheld the law pretty much in full. Several legal experts predicted this, but virtually no one in the political world thought it — everyone was braced for the opposite. Thousands of people in politics spent weeks readying themselves for a strike-down, and now suddenly, all the people have to turn on a dime and say, “Now what?” President Obama gets a major vindication. On the substance, sure: the mandate is merely a means to an end, and there are other means that could be substituted for it. But on the politics? No. A mandate strike-down would’ve been horrible for Obama.

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huffingtonpost.com — As I was waiting anxiously for today's Supreme Court decision, I knew there was a man in Colorado I'd met on the first anniversary of the Affordable Care Act who was likely far more anxious than I was. I do not recall the man's name, but I have kept him in mind in the months since he came up to the podium to tell me after I spoke to an audience in Denver that he knew he was alive that day because of the new law. To me, he came to represent the thousands of Americans of whom I know can truthfully say that they probably would be in their graves if not for ObamaCare. That man was among millions of people in this country who insurance companies have labeled "uninsurable," meaning they could not buy insurance coverage at any price because of pre-existing conditions.

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epi.org — he individual mandate lives! Excellent. For uninsured Americans anyway. But for those of us who had comments ready in case it was struck down, it’s kind of inconvenient. So, in the interest of recycling, I do want to keep something front-and-center about this particular conservative attack (opposition to the mandate) on health reform: Whatever it’s premised upon, the practical impact of opposing the mandate (and since this is true of all recent conservative ideas on health care one might be forgiven for thinking that it’s a strategy, not a quirk) is simply to make health care more expensive. And why are conservatives dedicated to making sure Americans pay too much for health insurance?

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thinkprogress.org — The Supreme Court ruled today that the Affordable Care Act, the comprehensive health care reform package signed by President Obama in 2010, is constitutional. The Court upheld the law’s most controversial provision, the individual mandate, ruling that it is constitutional under the government’s authority to levy and collect taxes. Republicans have falsely claimed the mandate was the “biggest tax increase ever in American history,” so of course, conservatives immediately jumped on the idea that the individual mandate was a massive tax hike on the middle class, reviving an argument Republicans have made since the law passed more than two years ago.

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washingtonpost.com — Any day now, the U.S. Supreme Court may make possible something that has yet to happen: an honest and complete discussion of the Affordable Care Act.  And if it throws out all or part of the law now popularly known as “Obamacare,” we will need a fearless conversation about how a conservative majority of the court has become a cog in a larger right-wing project to make progressive political and legislative victories impossible. And here is where the court’s reintroduction of the health-care issue into the political debate could be turned into a blessing by allies of reform, provided they take advantage of the opportunity to do what they have never done adequately up to now. They need, finally, to describe and defend the law and what it does.

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washingtonpost.com — Robert Samuelson castigated President Obama in a recent column for a lack of “judgment” in getting his landmark health-reform law passed. I profoundly disagree. Obamacare is helping our nation achieve health care that is excellent, accessible to all and affordable. In the 17 months that I led the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), I saw how this law is helping tens of millions of families and is finally putting our health-care system on the right track. Samuelson is right to be concerned about health-care costs. We’ve been on an unsustainable path for decades. Some people believe that the only way to address this problem is to shift costs to consumers. Obamacare has a far better approach: reduce health-care costs by providing better care and promoting better health.

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guardian.co.uk — If the supreme court strikes down the mandate or the entire law, there will be constitutional fallout, in addition to the political and policy uncertainty. It will mean that a widespread agreement about how and why the federal government can regulate economic matters, which had been settled as a constitutional matter since the 1930s, may be in doubt. And should the court strike down the Medicaid expansion, the legality of other federal-state partnerships will also be in doubt. While there is nothing certain about what might happen to the president's signature healthcare legislation in the coming days, or what it will mean for Americans and their access to healthcare in the years ahead, it is not at all in doubt that a supreme court that has tried to avoid being an election-year issue every four years will become a debate topic and stump speech, and perhaps even a bumper sticker, very soon.

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newyorker.com — On March 23, 2010, the day that President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, fourteen state attorneys general filed suit against the law’s requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance, on the ground that it was unconstitutional. It was hard to find a law professor in the country who took them seriously. Orin Kerr, a George Washington University professor who had clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, said, “There is a less than one-per-cent chance that the courts will invalidate the individual mandate.” Today Kerr puts the chance that it will overturn the mandate at closer to “fifty-fifty.” The Republicans have made the individual mandate the element most likely to undo the President’s health-care law. The irony is that the Democrats adopted it in the first place because they thought that it would help them secure conservative support. It had, after all, been at the heart of Republican health-care reforms for two decades.

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