Health Care Challenge

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Justices to Hear Health Care Case as Race Heats Up,” will bring the debate over President’s Obama signature achievement, “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” to a climax right in the middle of the Presidential campaign.

This development ensures that the health care debate will remain one of the front and center issues in the campaign, perhaps eclipsing the economy as the primary concern of voters. That result carries peril for both sides in the debate, threatening to energize the bases of either one Party or the other depending on which way the Supreme Court rules.

The Supreme Court scheduled more than five hours of debate on the issue compared to the usual one. Two hours are devoted to the individual mandate, one hour to whether it can be severed from the rest of the law, and three hours on related matters. These matters include the expansion of Medicare as a condition for state participation in the program as well as an abstruse legal issue, the “Anti-Injunction Act.”

As is typical of legal arguments, this Act could throw the whole process into confusion and delay a ruling until 2015. The Act prevents lawsuits designed to prevent the collection of a tax, and thus, a lawsuit could not be filed until the first “tax” is collected — in other words, when the first mandate is applied.

The final ruling could have a major effect on the future course of our government and the type of society we bequeath to our children. One hopes it involves care for our fellow man and a more compassionate society.