Progressive Opinion

dailykos.com — Texas Gov. Rick Perry was one of the first Republican governors out of the blocks to vow he'd never take any of that federal Medicaid expansion money after the Supreme Court ruled that states could refuse to participate in that provision of the Affordable Care Act. He announced on July 9 that he'd reject the program. Either he didn't send that message to the rest of his administration, or he was lying.

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billmoyers.com — I read a news story this week that sent me on a nostalgic trip down memory lane. This past Monday, July 30th was the 47th anniversary of Medicare, and to celebrate it, the “Raging Grannies,” as they’re known, gathered outside the county office building in Rochester, New York to protest rumored cuts to their Medicare coverage. They praised Medicare in song as “the best deal we have in the country,” and even called for expanding it Medicare into universal health care for everyone. It seems the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, was coming up from Washington to raise funds for Republican congressional candidate Maggie Brooks. The “Raging Grannies” wanted to make certain Ms. Brooks didn’t sign on to the GOP budget which includes cuts to Medicare. For myself, the “Raging Grannies” channeled a familiar voice, the Texas twang of my boss back in 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

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huffingtonpost.com — Aetna's had a lot to say lately about how  business is good. The company disclosed last week that it made $458 million in profits this spring, and said it expected to make more money this year than executives previously thought possible. The firm also signaled it set aside three quarters of a billion dollars from policyholders to buy back shares of its own stock instead of paying more claims. But a few days before that, Aetna's CEO got a real-world understanding of just how inadequate some of the company's policies are. And thanks to Twitter, the rest of us got a better understanding of how U.S. health insurers are able to profit so handsomely from the inadequate policies they sell, especially to students.

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commondreams.org — It is becoming increasingly apparent that it’s important for the poor to stay healthy. There is no way the seventh richest country in the world is going to be able to care for the poor if they get sick and they owe it to the rest of us to stay healthy. If they don’t, it inflicts on the more fortunate a sense of guilt, except of course, among those who attribute the state in which the poor find themselves, to their own lack of initiative. Those are people like Rick Perry, the governor of Texas.

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dailykos.com — The opinion of the Supreme Court (PDF) regarding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act has mostly drawn attention to the individual mandate. Five justices of the Supreme Court, the four less conservative justices plus the author of the opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts, found that the individual mandate was a valid exercise of Congress' taxing power. I myself have focused much attention on the views expressed by the five conservative justices regarding Congress' power under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper powers and the threat these views may pose to our conception of our modern national government as established by the New Deal and court decisions of the era. But there is no doubt that the first effects of the Court's decision will come in the area regarding ACA's Medicaid expansion provisions.

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The individual mandate is constitutional and the media spin is in. In switching his vote at the eleventh hour, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts not only came to the rescue of the president’s primary domestic achievement, but also to the rescue of the court itself. With the stroke of his judicial pen, Roberts moved the institution away from the partisan divide that has crippled the country’s civic life and politics and restored the court’s reputation as an independent bulwark committed only to the rule of law. So let the canonizations of the chief begin; at least the branch of government under his wise guidance is above the fray. Except that the court isn’t above the fray; it’s smack in the middle of it. To be sure, the spin has some things right. But the spin omits a darker side to the controlling opinion authored by the chief justice. more »

forbes.com — The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, saying that the individual mandate is constitutional as a tax. This is fantastic news for the nearly 50 million uninsured Americans. Women in particular should pop the champagne and celebrate. Of those millions of uninsured, 19 million are women. Women are big financial winners in this decision in other ways. The first is the elimination of gender rating, or charging women more because they’re women, pure and simple.All told, the practice costs women about $1 billion a year. That will now become illegal in 2014, after the ACA is fully implemented. Insurers will no longer have free reign to charge women whatever they like for no discernable reason. That extra $1 billion in our pockets sounds pretty good.

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nationalmemo.com — There is only one state in the country in which people don’t have to worry that losing your job will mean losing your health care, or about taking a job that doesn’t have health care benefits, or that you won’t be able to find affordable health coverage if you have a pre-existing condition. That state is Massachusetts, and the great irony is that if the governor who signed the law that created that system gets elected president, it will remain the only state where Americans will have the security of affordable health coverage that’s always there. President Obama and Democrats must embrace ObamaCare as part of the story they are telling voters about the economy.

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slate.com — The Supreme Court’s decision to let the core elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act stand kicks the fate of the Obama administration’s signature initiative where it properly belongs—into the domain of politics — where a Romney administration would still have ample opportunity to dismantle the main elements of the law. One thing President Romney probably couldn’t do, however, would be the politically expedient step of simply repealing the legally controversial and politically unpopular fine levied on people who decline to purchase health insurance. But a future Romney administration would have to internalize the consequences of stripping the mandate and thus would be unlikely to try to isolate it.

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salon.com — Today, John Roberts got to decide what sort of healthcare system the United States should have. It would be difficult to explain to someone not familiar with the American legal-political system why this isn’t a crazy way to decide such an issue, for the very good reason that it is crazy when you think about it, which is why most people don’t. Who exactly is John Roberts, and why did he get to decide what sort of healthcare system the world’s richest and most powerful nation should have? Roberts is no more and no less than a politically well-connected Washington, D.C., lawyer. Roberts, in other words, happened to be in the right place at the right time.

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