How bout that?

I must say I was surprised by today's Supreme Court decision (see yesterday's post here). I am a little concerned about the Medicaid part of the decision, in which the court said the expansion was constitutional but the feds couldn't withhold Medicaid funding from states that refuse to enroll more people. This could give states the ability to weasel out of what to me is a key piece of reform.

In other words, Medicaid expansion is the real public option.

Still and all, pretty cool.

Anybody's guess

It looks like June 28 2012 will be a historic date as the US Supreme Joke I mean Court is supposed to rule on the constitutionality of health care reform. Here's one take on that.

And here's another: a friend of mine recently pointed out that the individual mandate is less like requiring people to buy broccoli and more like making it harder for people in a restaurant to run out without paying their bill and forcing other customers to fork it over.

The deeper issue here is that of legitimacy. I wonder whether the current majority on the US Supreme Court is totally overcome with partisan frenzy or whether it might be able to take a long view and recognize that being perceived as being totally biased totally undermines the whole idea of having a Supreme Court to start with.

I guess we'll see soon enough. I'm not sure, alas, that the smart money is on the long view.