by Smitty
Megan McArdle asks the negative question: what if SCOTUS strikes down ObamaCare?
I like the more positive assertion in the post title. “Judicial restraint” for the last century has seen the SCOTUS asleep at the switch, while Federal over-reach has led to government run amok. Certainly, a few generations have benefited, but the prospect of debt slaver facing us all is scant comfort.
McArdle writes:
But what if the whole thing goes? I don’t see a way forward for anything that current progressives think of as health care reform;
it basically precludes the Netherlands model, and possibly most of the other European models, though I have to think more about the latter before I’m sure. But there’s a strong possibility that any ruling that eliminated the individual mandate would make anything but single payer or a national health service illegal. Ironically, a conservative court might push health policy to the left.
Or maybe a better way to put it is that it would polarize the choices: incremental tweaks, or single payer. (I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that our legislators would not pursue the folly of guaranteed issue and community rating without a mandate). Where would it go?
Not, I think, in the direction of single payer. The bill would be staggering. Yes, yes, I know you want to raise taxes to pay for it, but the price tag would still give American voters sticker shock. You’d never get it through the Senate unless the composition of that august body radically changed.
My hope is that in this unlikely event, it would open the way for something more like what I’ve proposed: catastrophic income insurance for everyone (i.e., the government will cover health care costs above some fairly high percentage of your income), with less support for first-dollar coverage.
How about a national Come-to-Beavis meeting, where States reclaim responsibility for citizens, and citizens decide how European they want to be?
Breaking the ObamaCare yoke could trigger the chain-reaction replacement of the rest of the unsustainable entitlements, replacing them with, you know, honest systems founded upon sustainable revenue models.
Why is everyone looking at me like I’m off my meds?
