Obamacare: I’ve seen rabbits being pulled out of a Hat

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | MARCH 28, 2012

As the Supreme Court of the United States reviews the legality of the so called Obamacare socialist healthcare legislation, the first accounts of the justices opinions about it seem to be negative to say the least. Meanwhile, Obama supporters like James Carville are trying to win the battle already for the Democrat side. Carville has said that a loss in the Supreme Court will help democrats.

CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin said that Obamacare is a train wreck and that expectations are low for the legislation to survive the justices’ review. As the hours go by, some opinions from their analysis have been leaked into the media, with Justice Kennedy saying that Obamacare fundamentally changes the relationship between the people and their government. Justice John Roberts has compared the mandate too make anyone and everyone buy government sponsored healthcare to having that same government mandating that people buy a cellphone. “Can government make you buy a cell phone?” asked Roberts. Meanwhile, Justice Anthony Scalia questioned the individual mandate by asking pro Obamacare folks why was the definition of “market” so broadly represented in the text of the legislation. “Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli,” Scalia said. Does government make people buy broccoli?

Given this scenario, you would think that defenders of Obamacare would be absolutely sharp when speaking in favor of the legislation. But it wasn’t the case for Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who stumbled when trying to make the case for a legalized socialist healthcare system. Mr. Verrilli continuously coughed and stuttered while trying to speak about the wonders of Obamacare and justifying the government controlled healthcare scheme. But is this a doomsday sentence for Obamacare? It is also being reported that even Justice Sotomayor has expressed some doubts about some aspects of Obamacare. According to Reuters “the four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, all indicated that they believed the mandate valid under the U.S. Constitution. Two conservatives, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, were vocal in their skepticism about the requirement.”

I’ve seen rabbits being pulled out of hats before, so I would not hold my breath for a decision against Obamacare just yet. “Obamacare is in big trouble,” says Jeffrey Toobin, who has been in attendance during the review process. But just as Carville manage to paint a defeat as a victory, the main stream liberal media has orchestrated a campaign to prepare their audience for a possible loss, while at the same time lowering expectations in the minds of the rest of the public in order to take some pressure off a potential decision that upholds Obamacare as it stands. It is the typical “playing possum game”. They’ve done it before with the so-called kinetic action in Libya, the war in Iraq and a possible attack against Iran and Syria.

What are the chances that Obamacare will not pass, that it could be upheld? According to Mr. Toobin, there are 5 very solid votes to throw out this healthcare legislation out the window. But the idea that people should participate in this socialized way of delivering healthcare also has four very strong votes that support it in the four liberal Supreme Court justices. Mr. Toobin says the fifth vote, a conservative one, could decide whether or not Americans are indeed obligated — even if such obligation is unconstitutional — to purchase government healthcare. That vote comes from Justice John Roberts, who although has expressed reservations about Obamacare, has not shown a clear cut opinion about the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the law. “I think it just looks bad for this law,” says Toobin.

A popular talking point that has been circulating is that those who do not enter the government mandated healthcare system will make it that much more difficult for those who do pay for the services provided under such a system. This is a way to sort of hijack public opinion and to misguided the public to support and accept Obamacare because it is good for the ‘commonwealth’. It is the typical collectivist view that people must do what is better for the mass, as supposed to taking care of themselves first, to then help others.  Those who do not support Obamacare, as we have seen since the law was brought up and discussed in mainstream American, will be ostracized and called names for not complying.

If the Supreme Court upholds Obamacare as it is now, it would establish a dangerous precedent that the government can tell anyone to buy any product as supposed to people being able to choose whatever they think it’s better for them. Here is where the government telling people to buy broccoli comes in handy. What will be next? Government telling people what car to buy? What airline to fly or what supermarkets to go to purchase groceries? How about how much electricity, gas or water people should use? As explained by Mr. Toobin, who acts as a legal expert for CNN, Obamacare forces people to buy a product they may not want or that they may not need. The same is true for tax collection, for example. Although the Constitution is very clear about the ways in which government must operate, people are obligated to pay income tax. If Obamacare is thrown out due to its unconstitutional nature, couldn’t citizens also make a case for not paying income tax because of the unconstitutional way in which government forces people to pay it? How about challenges against the constitutional amendment and the way it was passed to allow the government to tax people’s income?

What happens if the individual mandate is deemed unconstitutional, but the rest of the law is not? Because Obamacare is directly dependent on the government’s ability to force citizens to buy insurance in order to finance Obamacare, it is hard to see how the rest of the program would be able to stand on its own feet. Government would have to kill Obamacare as a whole, restructure it in order to make it available without the monies collected from individuals who decide not to join the program, or raise taxes in order to finance it. It is now well-known that the actual cost of Obamacare goes way beyond the total provided by the Federal Government and that it would take more than a national consensus for everyone to join in order to keep it alive for as long as the government wants.

According to recent polls, at least 30 percent of the interviewed Americans do support a decision to declare Obamacare unconstitutional. As the system stands now, the healthcare system is 20,000 doctors short to help the number of patients who use Medicare and Medicaid. What will happen if Obamacare is upheld and many more millions of people decide to make an appointment to see their doctor? What good does it make to have free healthcare if there isn’t a doctor to visit?

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Luis Miranda is the founder and editor of The Real Agenda. For more of his stories, subscribe to our article feed. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Email article ideas and insights through the Contact page.