U.S. Supreme Court Rules for Obamacare 6-3

The United States Supreme Court has just upheld an important provision of the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") by a 6-3 vote, with conservative judges John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy siding against the Republican-backed plaintiff and in favor of the Obama administration.  The provision involved whether federal subsidies of health insurance exchanges are constitutional in states where no state exchanges were authorized.  Supposedly, had the Court ruled the other way, the ACA would have been severerly hurt.  In any event, I have felt that those who fought to pass it into law back in 2009-10 had the generally correct idea, but they left out a crucially important principal involving health care, insurance, and expense...

To my admittedly possibly simplistic way of viewing things, health care can either be regarded as an economic good, which then would obey the laws of scarcity and demand, or as a type of human right to which all in society are entitled.  If you believe in the first option, then you most likely would be against Obamacare as it aims to insure those previously unable to afford health insurance and diminish that concept of economic "scarcity".  But if you are like me and want everyone to have access to health care, then the entire concept of "insurance" becomes redundant, since therefore there would be no need to demographically separate people based on their medical history or ability to pay.  Besides, having the health insurance industry positioned between the people and their desired professional health care just adds a great burden of expense to the whole process.  If you are employed in the health insurance business or are dependent on someone who is, I'm sorry about all this...but the fact that you're making a living off of it tends to prove my point.  In any case, the Affordable Care Act, in my opinion, just kicks the can down the road regarding the burden that health insurance places on people.  Also, who says that businesses should be saddled with the burden of providing health benefits to its employees?  In my opinion, if we as a society believe in universal health care, then we should fund it through taxes and congressional budgeting in just the same way that we fund our national defense or road systems.  But the word "tax" has, for many years, been relegated to taboo status, politically speaking...so we're left with this halfway measure called the Affordable Care Act that does a lot of mandating of insurance but does little to guarantee that it will be affordable or that it will lead to quality health care. Although countries like Canada that have nationalized health care are often termed as practicing "socialized medicine", in truth they have freed their own (capitalist) businesses from the cost of providing health insurance and thus have given them a competitive advantage over our own companies.  And the prospect of people not being economically devastated by illness or injury means that they can participate more actively in their economy as consumers, further stimulating the economy, or put the money to use with investments...

In spite of my own view on the subject, I'm realistic enough to recognize that it is politically unfeasible to reform health care on a national level that would restore the patient-doctor relationship without middleman interference or prevent catastrophic health issues from financially destroying families.  Neither the current law nor the system preceding it adequately address these issues, sad to say...