Though we could be skeptical of source of the prediction, it sure gives us food for thought.

According to American Action Forum a Right Wing Organization and Center Forward, a Centrist group the Health care reform law- Affordable Care Act- pejoratively known as Obama Care is set to be overturned by the very Right US Supreme Court.

Opinions were gathered from former Court Clerks on both sides of the ideological aisle.  Eleven clerked for traditionally liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, 18 clerked for justices on the right, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas and nine worked for Anthony Kennedy. It is the firm opinion of these clerks and 18 attorneys who have fought this case before the Supreme Court that the law is set to be overturned.

As grim as this may sound for the political gains made by the Obama Administration, there may be a silver lining for those of us who were betrayed when Universal Health Care was surreptitiously traded for the individual mandate.

If the very Right Supreme Court overturns the individual mandate, there may be a chance at a redo but hardly within the next four years of an Obama Administration. So States that depend on Federal subsidies would begin to lose funding to Medicaid which would then impact the availability health care services to the people who comprise the bulk of Americans who are currently uncovered – the poor, the working poor, the crumbling middle class and children.

The lobbyist-driven health Insurance Companies would then begin their bottom feeding and pretend to offer fair and competitive prices on Medicare and Employee plans which would help to alleviate the possible numbers that could show up at emergency rooms and ultimately defray costs to States.

This, in turn, will then take States back to the pre – Affordable Care Act days – when some forty million Americans were without health care coverage and as result had devastating impact on our economy.

So, what we could conclude from retracing the steps of the genesis of the Affordable Care Act law is that it is decidedly better, both morally and economically, for affordable health care to be available for all Americans. Hence, having the law overturned, though very possible because of the political pre-disposition of those who are charged with determining its constitutionality, will only be a bad thing in the sense that it will become a short term encumbrance but legislators will soon have to concede that providing health coverage at the State and Federal levels will be the only way to stem the financial bleeding from a lack of coverage at all.

This will then affirm that the Affordable Care Act is good for our economy and that any Republican alternative- judging from what has been proposed to date – will deny most of the forty million uninsured any kind of affordable health coverage and thus, return us to the financial dark ages.

The existence of the Affordable Care Act is, in itself, insurance that we can only get a better plan. So, in the event of it being overturned, there is a greater chance of President Obama taking a bolder step forward to make good on the Universal Health Care Plan that he had campaigned upon.

The midterm elections are now being billed as ratification for the Obama Administration; particularly the Health Care Bill.  Many are of the opinion that the Mid Term elections of November 2010 is an event that many of our congressional politicians are dreading. Stock opinion is that the passage of Health Care Reform was the undoing of many because it went against the ‘will of the people’. Perhaps it did, but only to the extent that people are still waiting for a simple, clear, non politicized delineation of what Health Care Reform now offers Average Joe.

I guess the problem with the ‘sweeping reform is the fact that most of it will not be implemented, in toto, until 2014. During this time, there would have been the mid terms of 2010, the generals of 2012 and the other midterm of 2014. The ‘sweeping reforms’, thus remain precariously on the periphery of implementation – hardly sweeping at all, though the sum total of its intent is.

There is certainly some cause for anxiety now, as the political temperature becomes feverish and somewhat allergic to the current administration. Not sure anyone thought that after the President signed the reform that there would have been even a slim chance of its repeal. And perhaps there is none, except that the structure of politics in our Democracy seems to be amoebic now, with our Democratic Administration reforming to accommodate the Tea Party invasion, rife with its Totalitarianism/Fascism and anything else that falls out of that end of the Political belly.

The fear of a midterm upset for Health Reform, is that the core of this reform takes effect after 2014 – the measurable part; the part that would tell us unequivocally, how many of the uncovered 46 million are actually covered, per the legislation mandate. In its core is the ban on excluding individuals based upon preexisting conditions, and the establishment of an insurance market place where insurance companies could compete for the business of employers and individuals, thereby driving prices down.

Undoubtedly this is the meat and potatoes of the bill, yet it does not eclipse in substance, the first part the Part A, which prohibits life time spending caps, revoking coverage for anything other than fraud – though this still lacks the humanitarianism that should go with reform – coverage for pre-existing conditions and 50%tax credits for small businesses.

Undeniably the Health care bill, was tiered for political expediency. It was passed successfully only after a shameless exchange of incentivized compensational goods and services. That’s what we, the electorate saw. What we did not know was that it was a three card monte – the bill being a three- part time- release with the parts that would least offend the conservative block, or the Tea Party Groups, being released in later successions, depending upon how financially impacting  they are upon public coffers.

So Part A, which prohibits life time spending caps, revoking coverage for anything other than fraud, coverage for pre-existing conditions and 50%tax credits for small businesses, can be considered more as the Administrative arm of the thing and the part that would be more appealing to its opponents, since it is the part that would delve least into public funds.

Then Part B, the individual mandate would not take effect until 2014 and at this time, individuals not covered by health insurance, would be considered an undue burden to tax payers and would be fined for not being covered.  At this time, not coincidentally, the subsidies to make purchase available and the exchanges within which insurance companies must compete for the business of clients will take effect.

This is when the reader needs to reflect upon the contingency of the passage of this bill. It was passed, tenuously, only because the Democrats agreed to push the meat and potatoes out four years. In so doing, they gave their opponents the satisfaction of being able to fight to keep the bill out of legislation if there is sweeping defeat of the democrats in 2010 Mid Terms and sweeping defeat of the Democrats in 2014 Generals. 

So the monte was set up. Unions got their piece of the pie. A $5billion package was included in the reform bill to help unions and employers  cover employees 55 and older not yet eligible for Medicare through 2014. The votes of the congressmen supporting the unions were, thus, bought  States, most notably Nebraska, indicated that their votes were for exchange of economic benefits to their states.

So through a high tech pillaging of the taxpayers, health care reform was passed. History was made. Those who voted for it have a chance to say that it was their support that made that history possible. We, the people, are still smarting from its effect. We still do not know what it is. The ‘mission of good healthcare at affordable costs’ seems so lost when the Gentleman from Nebraska offered his vote at the usurious rate of $100million forever for state Medicaid benefit payments. The Gentlewoman from the South, Mary Landrieu from Louisiana, took a $300 million dollar incentive for her vote. Longevity in Political office was bought on tax payers dollars. Politicians shamelessly demanded ‘pay for play’.

Before the Public Option was Universal Health Care. Before the Tea Party was Harry and Louise. The politics of Harry and Louise obliterated any chances of Universal health care. The power of anecdotes has long reigned supreme over intelligent deduction and scientific calculation, especially along the ideological spectrum. In recent months that spectrum has been heating up.  Apparently, the politics of personal attack on the president and his roots provide the best path to disruption, for many. It is much more palpable to project the promulgator of health care reform as a misplaced foreigner with a nationalistic agenda. That would bypass all of the boundaries of human decency and appeal directly to those who are too conservative to share.

The US, one of the  richest countries in the world, would prefer  to take a bow for gifting economic aid to the tune of billions annually, to any given country, rather than to take care of the basic right of health care needs for its own people.

For the politicians behind this move, the moral imperative here is more ideological than moral.

www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/09/13/gvsf0915.htm

It was February 25 2010.

It was a day of singular accomplishments.

On this day, our top elected officials sat down to discuss the state of health care in our country.

Singularly incredible.

Then after noting that the state of health care was in an abominable state of disrepair they agreed that it had to be addressed with a sense of urgency.

Singularly epiphanous.

For even as each faction acknowledges that the number of Americans who lack health insurance now stands between 40 and 46 million, the nonchalance with which they declare these numbers is disconcerting.

For, it is relayed in a tone that suggests that 46 million is not a crisis threshold but, conversely, is a number that should merely trigger the ludicrous posturing we are seeing from both sides. Ideology seems to have superseded pragmatism at this juncture and the health of citizenry has become a very perverse pawn in this battle that is being waged to reinstate and preserve the politics of don’t have, too bad but well think about it the platform of our country’s conservative center.

Prior to this historic sit down by our elected officials, one faction listed a set of demands upon which their meeting was contingent. The President had to agree not to stand at a podium, lest he appeared to be professorial; neither was he allowed to sit in head chair position, lest he appeared to be the country’s head official; title of President notwithstanding.

The Presidents deference to the hubris of these demands was foretelling and for those of us who enjoy good political theater we could hardly contain our anticipation, as we grabbed our popcorn and soda and commandeered our armchair to witness what was forecast to be a parody of health care deliberations.

The cameras rolled and the opposing faction to health care Reform, held true to character. Their props were abundant. It was necessary to conduct effective show and tell to convince a nation, forty six million of whom could hardly afford to have a headache, that there was no difference between their health needs and the demands of the health care industry which consumes some 17% of GDP.

We anticipated some double speak; we anticipated profuse use of the term Free market principles; we anticipated hearing about the ills of socialized medicine and how the health care bill would increase the tax burden for generations to come.

But we also anticipated firmer Democratic push back on most of the baseless assertions of the oppositionists.

We expected the Dems to highlight Bush’s socialized medicine plan a 17 billion flimflam which guaranteed 38% increase in pharma profits; a 17 billion flimflam which prohibited the leveraged use of numbers to negotiate with the pharma companies, to receive lower costs based upon demand.

We expected to hear The Dems highlight every portion of the wars that was funded on the backs of taxpayers. Instead, we saw a limp thrust and parry exchange coming from the democratic side of the aisle.

Political aspersions were abundant from the oppositionists. Like well rehearsed theater, there were punctuated cries of start over with a fresh piece of paper, referring to the configuration of the health care proposal – notwithstanding the fact the current configuration took one year and thousands of pages to benefit 46 million citizens who are still uncovered and many millions more who are straining under the burden of daily rising premiums

Posturing was on the menu and posturing was served up. But posturing aside, the irony here is that America prides itself on being known as the worlds de facto leader industrially, politically and socially; a distinction that our posturing oppositionists trumpet at lib.

Yet, in actuality, many of the third world nations that are so categorized, are way ahead of sophisticated America, in administering this base need to its citizens. Cuba is known for its quintessential health care, cutting edge strides, which are available to all citizens. China spends a mere $850 billion Yuan (USD$124 billion) to offer health care to its 1.3 billion citizens an example of universal health care at its best. By contrast, our population is a mere 300 million and a much greater amount is spent annually on its health care.

America is undoubtedly a leader in the field of science, medicine and technology. The bathos here is that, in spite of all of its superiority, it cannot devise an intelligent way to provide a base need for its people. Instead, it allows this provision to be steered by ideology and monopolized by palm- greasing lobbyists and an industry that has the capacity to keep the economy in the depths of the red.

We are in a country and in an era that determines its propensity to fail based upon the word, big and based upon which party’s verbiage this word adorns.

Two years ago, our banks were too big to fail – a Bush 43 maxim. Billions of dollars were pumped into them and from all accounts there has been relative recovery, both in the financial health of the institutions, as well as, in the country’s economy.

In this instance, big was in the lexicon of the ruling party, so big was adapted to suit their purpose. Government intervention was the only way out. And the concept of pumping government funds into private institutions was never paralleled to socialism.

At the recent bipartisan sit down on health care, and in diametric opposition to the context of too big to fail two years ago, an oppositionist senator, Lamar Alexander said Our country is too big, too complicated, too decentralized for Washington to write a few rules about remaking 17 percent of the economy all at once.

Translation? In this context, big was too big for government intervention, and unlike the intervention with the TARP of Bush and Paulson, which benefited the dividend paying behemoths that many of their ilk had a financial interest in, creating a health care vehicle for those who simply cannot afford it would be the fulfilling of the socialist prophesy that many had foretold about this liberal, Barrack Obama.

Then as in point finale, the backhanded snippet: That sort of thinking works in a classroom, but it doesn’t work very well in our big, complicated country, had to be thrown in for good measure.

For there is always need to let the public know that our Presidents background, much to the chagrin of many, is one that is superiorly academic; so he just might not know the difference between the hypotheticals of a classroom and the economic reality of a health care budget for this big, complicated, decentralized country. What a demerit, this burden of academic superiority.

So, the cries to start over continue to pierce the boiler room atmosphere that is now the climate within the congressional chamber, as health care reform is being reconciled.

I agree. Start over is the best option. Only this time, I pray that starting over is done truly heeding the voice of the people.

Last I heard, the Public Option had been transformed into a gift horse for many. Votes were leveraged against tax payer dollars. Politicians were being made into political saviors for their states, as they sold their votes for programs that secured their political longevity back home.

So I agree. I agree that start over we must. Only, this time, let us start where we truly began; for if my memory serves me correctly, the hotly contested Public Option is only a very diluted, shamefully adulterated version of the Universal Health Care Plan, so many of us anticipated when we voted for the change we believed in.

Already the oppositionists have labeled the option to use reconciliation as the Presidents nuclear option.

So I say nuke it. Nuke the whole Public Option mockery. For if we truly allow ourselves a trip down memory lane, we may well recall that the Public Option was the spawn of Harry and Louise who banished Universal Healthcare with such absoluteness that now, it can only reappear disguised as a hybrid version of its former self, with an off shoot of the ineffective Public Option, which comes loaded with its current deficiencies, rewards to the health care and drug industries and lots of suspect promises to amend as we go.