Latest Rube Goldberg Entitlement Disaster

[LogikAndReazon]

"Fans of ObamaCare must be busting a gut three times over. The mandate that conservatives now hate was originally a conservative proposal. In upholding it, Chief Justice John Roberts followed President Obama's Rose Garden instructions to the letter: The Court must find an act constitutional if it happens to be the signature act of a president running for re-election.

Worse, in doing so, he may have read any constitutional limit on Congress out of the Constitution while pretending to do the opposite. Congress cannot compel you to do anything Congress wishes, but it can impose taxes on you until you finally have no rational alternative but to do whatever Congress wishes.

History will judge whether Mr. Roberts saved the reputation of the court or lost his nerve. Many conservatives obviously suspect the latter. Resolved: The government cannot make you eat broccoli, though it may levy a non-broccoli-eating tax on any who refuse..."

Jenkins: ObamaCare—Upheld and Doomed - WSJ.com

 

[LogikAndReazon]

ObamaCare is doomed in any case. His opinion makes clearer than ever that ObamaCare is a tax program—throwing more tax dollars at an unreformed health-care system. ObamaCare is a huge new entitlement in a nation laboring under commitments it already can't afford. Those who gripe that he just authorized a vast expansion of the welfare state haven't reckoned with this fiscal reality principle.

What's more—and save us your constitutional brickbats—the mandate's survival could actually be a convenience to those who remain seriously interested in fixing health care.

GOPers, including Mitt Romney, immediately adopted "repeal" as their mantra. But repealing ObamaCare would just leave us with the health-care system we have, which is already ObamaCare in many respects—an unsustainable set of subsidies bankrupting the nation.