Jonathan Bernstein describes the emerging liberal position on the Supreme Court and health care:
[T]he Roberts Court is unscrupulous, unprincipled, and nakedly partisan, and are going after the ACA for purely partisan reasons. So if only we passed single-payer, everything would be fine.
This sounds ridiculous to Bernstein, and it sounds ridiculous to me as well. The constitutionality of the individual mandate is straightforward; to
borrow
from the New York Times-"Congress has indisputable authority to regulate national markets and provide for the general welfare through its broad power to tax. Nothing about the mandate falls outside those clearly delineated powers." If the Court overturns the individual mandate, it will have less to do with precedent and more to do with an ideological opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which was manufactured at the moment that liberals adopted conservative ideas for health care reform.
In a world where the Supreme Court overturns health care reform for nakedly partisan reasons, what exactly will stop them from doing the same to single-payer health care, or any other scheme for universal insurance that liberals can devise? I have an answer!
Nothing, nothing at all.
