Obamacare is constitutional

A big relief for Obama today. Reuters reports:

The US Supreme Court has upheld President Barack Obama’s healthcare law in an election-year triumph for him and fellow Democrats and a stinging setback for Republican opponents of the most sweeping overhaul of the unwieldy US healthcare system in about a half century.

In a 5-4 ruling based on the power of Congress to impose taxes, the court preserved the law’s “individual mandate” requiring that most Americans obtain health insurance by 2014 or pay a tax.

Opponents of the law had argued the mandate was an overreach by the federal government into the private lives of citizens. The court was deeply divided on this issue, but the majority ruled that Congress’ taxing power was more important.

The law’s “requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court’s majority.

“Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness,” wrote Roberts, who was joined by the four most liberal members – Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – in upholding the law’s key provision.

Very interesting that the Chief Justice voted with the liberal wing.

This is definitely good news for Obama. Having his major domestic achievement thrown out would have meant he would have very little domestic achievements to campaign on.

However I do find it hilarious that the left celebrate Obamacare as a huge victory for socialised medicine and the like. If a Republican President had proposed the key tenet of Obamacare, I suspect it would be decried around the world as vicitimising the poor.

You see Obama failed to get a law through which set up taxpayer funded healthcare as in the UK, Canada and New Zealand.

What he passed was basically a law saying it is illegal not to have private health insurance and we will fine you, if you don’t get some. Someone on Twitter said:

Oh no, poor people will get proper health care and avoid dying earlier?

Which I thought demonstrated they had no idea what the law actually does. The individual mandate does not extend health care to poor people. It fines poor people for not having health insurance.