Adele Ferguson

IT’S GOING to be awhile yet before there is a consensus on Obamacare.

That is, whether it was a Democratic victory because it was upheld by the Supreme Court, thus improving the president’s chances for reelection, or a Republican victory because it turned out to be the biggest tax increase in U.S. history, providing ammunition for Republicans retaking Congress and the presidency as the only way to rid ourselves of an unpopular bill.

Also, whether Chief Justice John Roberts is a statesman for casting the deciding vote affirming its constitutionality or he exceeded judicial authority by recasting the finding source for Obamacare to make it so.

I always thought judges, in particular those who interpret the Constitution, were required and expected to form their opinions on what was before them in black and white, just as jurors are required and expected to consider only what is before them in evidence in making their decisions.

INSTEAD, JUSTICE ROBERTS decided that the mandate that all Americans must purchase health insurance or face a financial penalty was only constitutional if it was tied to Coigress’s authority to levy taxes. But how can it be constitutional to say you must buy insurance or we’ll make you pay a tax. That’s not supposed to be how taxes work.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said this would affect the uninsured who can afford insurance but choose not to buy it. “Free riders” she called them. But how does she or anyone know who the free riders are?

Rush Limbaugh doesn’t purchase health insurance because he can afford to pay for his own. Is he going to be taxed for that?

Democrats bring up the millions of people who don’t have health insurance and who will benefit by this because they’ll be subsidized. But just because people don’t have health insurance doesn’t mean they don’t have health care. I doubt there are few Americans or even illegal immigrants who don’t know that you can go to a hospital emergency room and be treated without having to pay for it. There’s a law that says so. The impetus for launching health care reform was the enormous cost of treating all these freebies who don’t want to sec a doctor because his office will ask how you plan to pay.

THIS WHOLE THING has been one big can of worms from the start when the president decided this was to be the legacy his administration would be noted for and pushed it instead of minding the store on jobs and the economy.

I doubt many of the Democrats who rammed it through ever bothered to read it. All they needed to know was that the president wanted it and they better, by God, deliver. No Republican voted for it. I doubt the president read it though; he said while campaigning he would read every line of every bill that reached his desk.

He also said previously he absolutely rejected any notion that it contained a tax increase. We are hearing today that there are 21 tax increases in Obamacare and its cost, despite the president’s insistence it would pay for itself, is $500 billion over the next decade. If he or the Democrats had even hinted at its tax content and cost in promoting the bill, it would not have passed because even some D’s wouldn’t go that far.

Now he calls it a victory for all Americans. But he has an out when the R’s accuse him of sneaking a tax increase through. “Don’t blame me,” he’ll say. “I didn’t do that. I said it was a penalty. The Supreme Court said it was a tax increase.”

We need a thorough and honest airing of exactly what Obamacare is and when people learn what a Pandora’s Box it is, the demand for repeal will be unstoppable.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)