Obamacare Wins, We Lose

It was a brilliant move by far Right (but oh so likable) Chief Justice Roberts to side with the Dem-appointed Justices and uphold ObamaCare.  After all, this is a massive victory for corporate power, forcing citizens to buy an expensive insurance product that won’t serve our needs very well but will profit industry, in lieu of receiving real health care.

Obamacare and its corporate mandate were born on the Right (as in Heritage Foundation) as a way to destroy the political prospects of any single payer system that would cover all Americans with a tax-funded system of guaranteed medical care.  This is the way all other industrial societies protect the right to health care, by taking it out of the hands of the giant insurance industry.  The right to health care is like the right to not be enslaved – there are  no half measures, and the insurance industry is the slave master.

Roberts may have brilliantly scored a “4-fer” victory:

1.)  He now has an interesting historic legacy.

2.) He and his Dem-appointed colleagues have given huge new powers to corporations, and further reduced the rights of citizens.

3.) Any real reform — call it single payer, or medicare for all — is doomed in bipartisan fashion.  The “pragmatists” who are for Obamacare are duped if they think it is going to be expanded to single payer.  From this point on, it will only be picked over and further reinvented to empower the insurance and drug industries.

4.) Roberts siding with Dems has probably bounced Obama right out of office.  The public overwhelmingly hates Obamacare, and this pours gas on the electoral fire.

No wonder Roberts delivered the goods!  What a great Right Wing Justice he is.

John Stauber is an independent author and activist.  He founded the Center for Media and Democracy in 1993, retiring in 2009.  He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

John Stauber is an independent writer, activist and author.  His books include Toxic Sludge Is Good for YouMad Cow USA and Weapons of Mass Deception.  In 1993 he founded the Center for Media and Democracy to exposed corporate, political and media propaganda campaigns.  He retired from the Center in 2008.  http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnstauber.