The Big O Loses the Big One

Some people just can't be happy for ObamaCare.

The Supreme Court. On most days, but not today, it is simply the Scaley Five. Today, it shocked the world by upholding ObamaCare's individual mandate. The one that makes you buy medical insurance or the IRS will visit you next next April to extract an ounce or two of the flesh you insist is invincible.

BuyO'Pay, one might call it.

Great? Or more like "okay."

The kludge that is BuyO'Pay eeked [sic] by on the tax angle. The Feds can sic the IRS on you until you scream. And then can't anymore. As in, who needs the rack these days?

Mandate on that for a while!

But the rationale that matters, the one that might allow real healthcare reform some day? That one was flogged silly (emphasis, silly) by an argument so comical that this long snoozing blog awoke like the alarm went off before noon.

The rationale employed Jon-Bob (Chief Justice Roberts if you got here late) for rejecting the use of the Commerce Clause to uphold the individual mandate is completely so next to last century, as one would expect. Perhaps, that was the deal that got his vote to uphold BuyO'Pay on taxing grounds.

Jon-Bob is pretending, essentially, that individuals without insurance are not in interstate commerce in the healthcare market.

If pretending were actual thinking, you'd all be at MIT.

He does use the insurance angle, but health insurance is not really not just insurance. Healthcare and its coverage is best though of as the medical risk allocation and coverage market. The one in which you all trade, almost every day. Today, did you take that aspirin you bought last week? Or use a band aid? Soap and condoms (though both may be more about religion and sex)? It's about health and medical care.

Almost everyone's medical risks in this country is covered one or more risk-spreading schemes. Every single product you touch is covered by product liability insurance, mostly to cover medical risks. By car insurance and workers comp, both with significant medical care coverage. Most of America's adult youth are, however vaguely, in the market for jobs not yet outsourced by Bain. Such jobs almost always come with fringes and workers comp. Those who are not interested in jobs, are likely eligible for Medicaid or living in their parents' attic as insurance riders

Your medical risks are covered, in part, by insurance held by others whenever you drive, shop, go to school or eat a Big Mac and super-sized fries.

You are not all in the national market for medical risk coverage? Please. Try to avoid it.

You are all covered by Social Security disability or Medicaid right now. All you have to do is meet the eligibility standards. You pay for Medicare, which is what, exactly? You are covered by governmental mandates that most ER's can't reject your emergency medical treatment, private insurance or not. If that's not a socially imposed medical risk coverage, what is?

Even just using a sidewalk. What do you keep telling yourself: Step on a crack, send your mother the ER. for free. Well, at least, that's her frakkin' risk, not yours. Unless, of course, you trip and break your own back or something silly.

Admittedly, if the sky falls, that is a medical risk that is not covered. And, thanks in small part to Jon-Bob's rationalizing, that is coming.