Unless the Supreme Court intends to set a precedent that it can change any law based upon any Administration's protestation that a law is not quite what it hoped, the Supreme Court will rule against the Obama Administration on Obamacare this coming or the following Monday. The language of the law is clear and if the Supreme Court can change or choose to ignore what is perfectly clear in this section of Obamacare, a precedent will be set that the Supreme Court can, if they choose, insert or remove the word 'not' in any legislation. (Note, while the Administration shamelessly points to a few words in a two thousand page law, the other two thousand pages do not address the issue presented to the Court.)
Immediately, Congress should pass very straight forward, concise and meaningful changes to Obamacare.
In Congress's legislation, Congress should allow the Federal government to provide subsidies to individuals under state exchanges. This would destroy any political position that Republicans are causing millions of people to suddenly be uninsured. (Yes, the Democrats created this mess, but that does not mean the Republicans cannot fix the problem or that if there is no fix, the Republicans will not be blamed.) This is the basic blocking and tackling needed to keep Republicans from being attacked for a mistake in which they were allowed no role. Recall that Republicans were effectively precluded from any participation in crafting the law and essentially precluded from even reading it before it was passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by the President.
However, that same legislation should incorporate five other changes to Obamacare:
First, the individual mandate should be repealed immediately. In a free country, if an individual or family chooses, for whatever reason, not to be insured, that is their right.
Second, the insurance industry should immediately be freed of all of the constraints and mandates placed on the content of their insurance policies. If we let the free market craft insurance policies that the public wishes to buy, a significant number of Obamacare participants will likely switch back to the free market and likely, many who have determined to be uninsured under Obamacare will purchase policies that work for them. If an individual does not want to be insured for mental illness or wants a policy that covers only catastrophic events, so be it. If an individual chooses, they should neither be directly or indirectly forced to pay for the social beliefs of anyone else.
Third, Obamacare subsidies need to actually be verified by the Internal Revenue Service. The currently reported situation wherein the IRS is simply making payments without verification is totally unacceptable.
Fourth, the Obamacare medical device tax must be repealed. This remains completely illogical. Obamacare was passed to increase the health of Americans and a medical device tax is imposed to make the purchase and of medical devices more difficult to afford. This belongs to Comedy Central.
Finally, the Cadillac tax must go. Again, Obamacare was passed to increase the health of Americans, yet if an entity (corporation, charity, whatever) chooses to allocate compensation costs to provide great health benefits to its employees, that entity must pay a special additional tax. Comedy Central.
The above plan does nothing to stop individuals from enrolling and/or continuing to be covered by Obamacare. Should the President choose to veto and Democrats choose not to join in over-riding the President's veto, then the voters can determine wherein lies the problem.
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