The Supreme Court might ultimately decide the healthcare debate

It looks more by the day like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t be able to twist enough Democratic arms to pass the Senate’s version of health care reform outright in the House, so she’ll probably end up using one of the back door deals that have been discussed to ram it through anyway. By whatever procedure it takes, I’m predicting that Obamacare is about to become the law of the land. I’m also predicting that as soon as it does a slew of lawsuits will be filed immediately to stop it.

There will be several possible strategies of attack for the lawsuits, but I believe the first attempt will be to ask the courts to declare the mandate that every person in the country must purchase a health insurance policy to be unconstitutional. No article or amendment in the US Constitution gives the government the authority to compel anyone to purchase anything, and that includes insurance.

Of course the liberals have been quick to point out that most states require automobile owners to purchase car insurance, but that analogy is way off the mark. You are only required to purchase auto insurance as a condition attached to the privilege of owning and driving a car. No state requires any person to own or drive a vehicle, which means that no state requires anyone to purchase car insurance if they choose not to. Rather than own a car, they can always opt to walk, take a cab or bum a ride from a neighbor instead.

Another possible plan of attack will be to challenge whichever sneaky procedural maneuver Pelosi and her minions choose for ramming the bill through without a direct vote on the already-passed Senate bill. A procedure called Reconciliation was the first tactic discussed, and I believe it would fail to stand up to a Constitutional challenge. The Reconciliation process was set up explicitly to allow the Senate to rush emergency budget measures through the legislative process without having to overcome a filibuster where 60 votes for cloture would be needed before the bill could even be brought up for a vote.

To use Reconciliation to pass Obamacare, the House would have to pass the Senate bill in its current form, then vote on a separate Reconciliation bill to iron out the difference between what the House wants in the health reform bill and the bill that has already passed the Senate. Harry Reid would then only have to muster 51 votes to pass the Reconciliation bill in the Senate instead of the usual 60 required to end a Republican filibuster.

It should be obvious to anyone capable of critical thinking that there is precious little in the Obamacare bill that deals with budgetary issues, so it should be an easy sell to the Supreme Court that the use of Reconciliation to pass it goes completely against the intent and authority of the process. One would hope so at least, and with the current makeup of the Court I believe that’s the way they will rule.

The irony of this entire debacle is that most Americans do want health care reform. They just don’t want this health care reform which if enacted will give the federal government direct control over the entire health care industry. There are a number of provisions in the Senate bill that are actually quite popular when considered on their own, but the bill as a whole is seen by most folks as a socialistic pile of junk.

Obama, Pelosi and Reid have boxed themselves into a corner. They have managed to invest an entire year on the prospect of passing a health care reform bill that an ever-growing majority of the American people simply do not want. But they plan to use any means possible to pass it anyway in order to create a “legacy” of being the President and Congress that finally got this liberal boondoggle enacted after a century of vain attempts. I believe the Supreme Court will ultimately be where this disaster waiting to happen finally meets its fitting end.