Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Watching the initial oral arguments to the Supreme Court regarding the plea to strike down all or part of Obamacare, the possibilities are sad, but almost laughable.

The Court correctly described the law as having been "cobbled together" with "parliamentary shenanigans". Early court-watchers seem to think that the law will be gutted by the Court. But the Court itself seems to be saying that they are not smart enough to rule on the hundreds of "mini-laws" contained in the bill that were created in the process of putting the whole thing together. I described the bill shortly after it was passed as a Rube Goldberg piece of legislation that seemed to have everything in it that virtually every party to healthcare wanted included. The media described that "champagne was flowing" in the lobbyists' offices on K Street after the law was passed. The politicians, particularly those on the left, have lauded the bill as a wonderful step forward in upgrading the healthcare for most Americans, particularly the tens of millions who depend only on hospital emergency rooms for their care.

If important parts of the law are struck down by the Court, we may have the old story of actually "getting something we wished for".

Now that initial arguments seem to indicate that the Court might strike down the "individual mandate" part of the law, the insurance companies are in full retreat. They're now saying that if the profits from all the new customers resulting from the mandate that almost everyone have insurance are removed without the Court also ruling on the requirement that they provide insurance to almost everyone, regardless of existing conditions and unlimited by a maximum lifetime payout, they may have to materially increase premiums for everyone else in order to maintain their profitability.

We won't know for awhile what the Supreme Court will finally decide. But it could easily turn out to be considerably more expensive for all of us...and still not address the problems of tens of millions of uninsured Americans and the effect on our economy of the unsustainable growth of healthcare costs as a percentage of GDP.

If the whole mess gets thrown back to Congress to make the obviuos necessary changes, what do you think the chances of that happening might be? Maybe we should form another super-committee. So far at least, there's no evidence that the justices are agreeing to meet with any lobbyists.

This is better than a single payer system of government-provided heath insurance like Medicare? Surely you jest.