Commentary: At War With Reality And Their Own Idea

By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS—Once again, the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court saved Republicans from themselves.

The nation’s high bench voted, 7-2, to preserve the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Among those voting with the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts and two of former President Donald Trump’s three appointees to the courts.

The court’s rationale for rejecting the challenge by 20 state attorneys general—including Indiana’s Todd Rokita—was withering. The justices said the suit shouldn’t even have been filed because none of the legal geniuses who came up with it could demonstrate they or anyone else had been hurt by the ACA.

“To have standing, a plaintiff must ‘allege personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief,’ ” the court said.

The problem?

“No plaintiff has shown such an injury.”

Ouch.

The court’s decision should end the fighting over Obamacare, but it probably won’t.

After the decision came down, Rokita—who seems to be obsessed with creating, rather than solving, problems—fulminated that the ACA was an “insidious government takeover.”

“Once again, the Supreme Court has declined to weigh in on the merits of this insidious government takeover of our healthcare, otherwise known as Obamacare, which has drastically driven up cost by squelching competition and choice. We’ll continue to push back against this unconstitutional law,” Rokita added in a written statement he sent to The Indianapolis Star.

If Rokita really believes that, he must be a) not very bright, b) completely disconnected from reality or c) both.

Chances are, though, that he doesn’t really believe it. Rokita is so consumed with ambition to be Indiana’s next governor that he would do anything to endear himself to the GOP’s rabid right wing and thus make it through a contested primary.

Including stripping 31 million Americans of health care coverage.

That’s how many of our fellow citizens now are covered by Obamacare. It’s a record.

The truth is that, overall, the ACA has been a success. It has provided coverage to millions of Americans who otherwise would have none and it has reduced costs. Some studies have pegged the savings at more than a half-trillion dollars.

It also has been a success for which Republicans have had no answer.

There’s a reason for that.

It was their idea.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, first conceived of what became Obamacare. The think tank wanted to create a market-driven alternative to a government-run, single-payer system.

The idea was first implemented by a Republican governor—Mitt Romney in Massachusetts—and initially touted as the GOP’s solution to the nation’s healthcare woes.

When Barack Obama became president, he identified galloping healthcare cost increases as a key to resuscitating the economy following the great recession of 2008. He calculated he wouldn’t be able to secure the votes in Congress to adopt a single-payer system and that Republicans couldn’t possibly object to a plan that was their idea in the first place.

He thought wrong.

The GOP rose in fury against what had been their plan. They organized rallies against it across the country. Their wrath was so fierce that Romney had to scrub all references to his healthcare success from the paperback version of his autobiography when he ran for president in 2012.

Why?

In the mid-1990s, when President Bill Clinton first tried to reform America’s healthcare system, his nemesis Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia, issued a famous declaration. He said Democrats couldn’t be allowed to “solve” the healthcare problem. If they did, they would rule the country for decades.

That’s the mindset that has driven one failed and futile GOP attempt to overturn Obamacare after another. Republicans such as Rokita have wasted a great deal of time, energy and money fighting their own idea.

That’s time, energy, and money they could have spent coming up with an even better plan or, failing that, taking credit for coming up with a program that has saved both lives and money.

Either option would have been a smarter play than tilting against their own concept for more than a decade.

The conservatives on the court realized that.

And, once again, they saved Republicans from themselves.

FOOTNOTE:  John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

The City-County Observer posted this article without bias or editing.