Obamacare Reckoning Begins

The recent Supreme Court verdict on Obamacare has been the cause of much head-scratching throughout the United States. Robert Alt and Nina Owcharenko attended Tuesday’s Bloggers Briefing to briefly discuss the ruling and shed some light on the confusing issue.

The Director of the Rule of Law Programs at the Heritage Foundation, Alt argued that the decision brought both good and bad news.  While the ruling has limited what Congress can do under the commerce clause, it has also given Congress an unprecedented taxing authority. Alt was not altogether surprised, however, that Roberts made the decision to uphold the law, pointing out that Roberts is generally hesitant to strike down whole laws or large portions of laws.

Owcharenko saw the survival of the healthcare reform act as simply “bad healthcare policy, regardless of the constitutionality.”  She noted a huge failure on the part of Washington and the writers of the law, as Obamacare will actually cause an increase in both healthcare costs and the number of uninsured.  As Heritage’s Director of the Center for Health Policy Studies, Owcharenko is concerned with tackling two particular issues: the HHS mandate and the Medicaid payroll tax that would take effect in 2013.

It is encouraging to know that, amidst the incompetence in Washington, policy analysts and law experts are doing the necessary work to insure that healthcare reform is done the right way.

Richard Thompson is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.

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