There’s been a firestorm of reactions this morning following the Supreme Court’s decision that Obama’s health care mandate requiring individuals to buy health care insurance or be penalized is, in fact, constitutional. Many people are upset, many people are excited. Some say it’s a victory for Obama, some are (confusingly) saying that this is a victory for Romney. Among all of the things being said, Nate Silver perhaps summed it up the best:
Particularly bad day for conventional wisdom if Roberts voted to uphold Obamacare but NOT Kennedy, as many report.
In other words, what are we to think now when the President Bush-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the high court’s liberals while Justice Anthony Kennedy swung toward the court’s more conservative sect? Who knows. One thing you can hedge your bet on is that this will not be the last any of us have heard about Obama’s health care reform – far from that, really. You might expect that the SCOTUS decision will intensify the debate instead of tempering it. To borrow from Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion, “That is not the end of the matter.”
At any rate, there are a number of different outcomes that could have been put into motion today, although now there’s just one that will be the focus of the government: how Congress will respond. Ahead of today’s ruling, Buzzfeed compiled what is basically a “Murder, F***, Kill” guide for the health care ruling and what to expect to happen as a result of the court’s decision. Now that we know what the high court has ruled, it might be worth returning to Buzzfeed’s map of what will likely happen now that the health care law has been deemed constitutional.
Just one more thing to complicate this already perplexing, troubling election year.