Will most likely kill the individual mandate (you didn’t honestly think he’d recuse himself, did you?) but I’m kind of okay with that — because it pushes the country closer to single payer and away from the insurance companies. It will take a while, and people will die in the meantime, but we’ll get there, I think. Here’s hoping.
Clarence Thomas
the problem with that theory is that:
(1) it’s not clear what other damage will be done if the individual mandate is struck down (e.g. will it make parts of medicare or social security illegal? they both are programs that everyone is authomatically made part of). how much collateral damage is done will depend upon how the decision is worded, and
(2) the idea that the failure of the obama health plan will lead to single payer places a lot of faith in the american political system’s ability to identify a problem and pass a law enacting the obvious solution. if nothing else, the last few years has made it clear that isn’t how our system works.
Did the defeat of the Clinton Health Care Plan in 1993 lead to single payer?
Yes, but it will make it very difficult to talk about cutting the budget without discussing it as an option.
Couple of differences: SS & Medicare are government programs paid for by taxes. The mandate is for citizens to pay private companies. Admittedly, we have similar rules for car insurance, but you don’t (officially) have to own a car. You can’t avoid having a body that might need medical care.
As for Susie’s point that it points the process more toward single payer: In 1993 most people in the US had no opinion on it and we didn’t have near-50 million uninsured. Now, so long as it’s called “Medicare for All,” a significant majority favors it. The majority has identified the problem and its solution. Whether the captured political system can catch up or not remains to be seen. And, yes, “collateral damage.” I would hate to be it. So there’s that.