Rejoice, America! Barack Obama’s signature Socialist legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, which doesn’t so much insure all Americans with actual health care as it does no longer allow billionaire health care executives to cackle wildly while doing the jitterbug on the sick, weakened bodies of children denied coverage, is finally heading to the Supreme Court, where nine men and women dressed in glorified Snuggies will rule on its Constitutionality, like whether your heart arrhythmia makes you 3/5ths what the white landowner with the robust, perfectly-beating heart next to you’s worth.
Hooray?
But will the wonderful, infallible pro-slavery document of the late 1700s permit American citizens the right to not die, penniless and alone in the streets, even if it’s not explicitly covered within its tattered, yellow pages of animal parchment?
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide the fate of President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, with an election-year ruling due by July on the healthcare system’s biggest overhaul in nearly 50 years.
The decision had been widely expected since late September, when the Obama administration asked the nation’s highest court to uphold the centerpiece insurance provision and 26 states separately asked that the entire law be struck down.
And then, if all goes well, drowned in a lake of brimstone and fire with the rest of the sinful acts of justice like Social Security, Civil Rights, and Voting Rights, where it belongs.
At the heart of the legal battle is whether the Congress overstepped its powers by requiring all Americans to buy health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty, a provision known as the individual mandate.
Legal experts and policy analysts said the healthcare vote may be close on the nine-member court, with five conservatives and four liberals. It could come down to moderate conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often casts the decisive vote.
The law, aiming to provide more than 30 million uninsured Americans with medical coverage, has wide ramifications for company costs and for the health sector, affecting health insurers, drugmakers, device companies and hospitals.
A decision by July would bring the healthcare issue to the heart of the presidential election campaign. Polls show Americans are deeply divided over the overhaul, Obama’s signature domestic achievement.
Less divided are the fringe-right millionaire and billionaire business executives, who thanks to the biggest provisions of the law not taking effect until 2014, have a rare chance to completely erase the whole Obamacare “affordable insurance for everyone” fiasco before it actually happens.
But what about the people, you ask?
The people???
Ugh, to health with them!!
So, remember those death panels you keep hearing about?
It’s called the Supreme Court.
[image via AP]