ACA Unexpectedly Ruled Constitutional by SCOTUS

As was the case with many other observers, yesterday's United States Supreme Court ruling upholding the 2010 Affordable Care Act, in particular its mandate provision, completely threw me off guard.  I expected this Roberts Court, which never sides with the regular guy against the rich and  powerful when the latter's financial interests are in play, nevertheless did just that by a 5-4 vote.  The four justices on the more liberal side (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagen) went for upholding the law while three of the predictably hard-rock right-wing pro-business justices (Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) were for striking it down.  This left Chief Justice John Roberts, expected all along to side with his arch-conservative colleagues, and the "wild-card" perennially deciding vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy.  I saw no reason for Kennedy to change his pro-big-business ways on this case, and I had given up on Roberts long ago as just a "robe" rubberstamping everything Scalia said.  So no, I didn't think the ACA had a snowball's chance in hell of not being ruled unconstitutional by the court because of its mandated coverage provision.  And it turns out I was completely right about Kennedy.  But Roberts' vote? That's what astonished me (and many others).

John Roberts, like the court's conservative wing, dismissed the claim that Congress had the constitutional right to pass the mandate due to the Commerce Clause.  Frankly, I agreed with him about his skepticism of the argument that an individual not buying something was an act of interstate commerce and thus gave an opening for the federal government to impose the mandate to purchase health insurance.  Instead, Roberts broke with his right-wing colleagues by holding that the mandate was constitutionally valid rather as a tax, implicitly upholding it (and thus the core of the law).

Suddenly, Chief Justice Roberts has become the unexpected star of this "show".  I had been very disappointed in him for his first few years on the high bench as he appeared to be towing a very biased ideological line.  But with this decision, he seems to be returning to what he stated during his confirmation hearing when he used a baseball analogy to describe the appropriate role of the Court: the Supreme Court isn't supposed to be a player.  Instead its proper role is akin to that of an umpire, calling balls and strikes.  He did a pretty good job of umpiring with this case, although I still think he has some work to do with his political impartiality...

My objection to the mandated insurance clause of the bill was that by simply being alive, one became obligated by law to purchase private health insurance.  That didn't sound constitutional or democratic to me, but rather fascist.  I still have problems with it, but I also understand that simply raising taxes to pay for the program instead of this mandate (the fine for a violation thereof is a de facto tax anyway, according to the Chief Justice) would never have passed Congress.  So we're left with this law, which is at least a less-than-ideal improvement over the previous situation...