The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is CONSTITUTIONAL.

Nearly 24 hours ago, the Supreme Court upheld PPACA (or pejoratively, "Obamacare") in a 5-4 decision.  While I'm glad the Court swung this way, I was stunned and so was most of the country, I'm sure.  Initially, news networks reported that it was struck down because they were so eager to be the first to break the story that they failed to read Roberts' entire opinion.  To their defense, it was probably safe to assume that if Roberts was issuing the majority opinion, it must have been against ACA because he is a conservative Bush appointee.  After some initial confusion, we realized that the law was upheld.  It still made for some good photoshopping, like this "Dewey Defeats Truman" inspired photo below.

Anyway, throughout the day, constitutional scholars came out of the woodworks on Facebook.  It was actually kind of sad to see how little people actually understand about this law and just how government operates in general.  First of all, the enactment of this law went precisely how our Constitution intends.  A majority of members of Congress voted for it, the president signed it, and when it came before the highest tribunal, the justices interpreted it.  Majority won.

The suprise in its passage was not that in reality it is unconstitutional.  It was that everyone expected it to be a purely political vote by the Court, which by and large, it was.  Four liberal justices - Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer, and Ginsburg - all voted to uphold the law on the commerce clause.  Four conservative justices - Alito, Kennedy, Thomas, and Scalia - all voted to overturn the law in its entirety (Thomas wrote the dissenting opinion).  The tie-breaking vote came from Chief Justice John Roberts, a Bush-appointee.  He even wrote the opinion!

In his opinion, he said the individual mandate was constitutional under Congress's taxing and spending power, not the commerce clause.  Republicans were (and still are) outraged that the bill was passed and has now been deemed constitutional thanks, in large part, to a conservative justice.  The strange part is, they don't like the part that requires people to purchase health insurance coverage (when I'm sure most people that I know who are complaining probably purchase it through their employer).  Republicans whine all the time about making people take care of themselves, don't depend on the government, be responsible, and when the government takes a step to do that, they get mad!  This mandate makes people responsible for their own health insurance but Republicans claim it infringes on their freedom by subjecting them to a penalty (tax...nuance) if they don't purchase it.  They also like most parts of the bill except for the mandate, which is the part that pays for the popular provisions! 

Hypocrisy abounds.



**I started this blog the day after PPACA was upheld.  I finished it three days later.  Hence the timing is off...