Individual Mandate Upheld As a Tax

     Something told me that people were doing too much assuming on this, in assuming that, due to the nature of the questioning during the oral arguments, that the Supreme Court was going to strike down the individual mandate. Maybe it is the natural pessimist in me though. Anyhow, the individual mandate has been upheld. But at least it seems that Justice Kennedy, the swing vote, took seriously the question of whether or not the government actually has the power to mandate people purchase something.

     In terms of the mandate being upheld, it's an obvious loss for the right-wing. But it was upheld as a tax that is collected via the IRS, not as within the government's power via the Commerce Clause. So in an odd kind of way, I think it can be said both sides won. The left got their mandate, and the right got the idea of it being constitutional via the Commerce Clause to mandate people purchase insurance shot down. As a tax, I've always been okay with the "mandate" as hospitals are required by law to treat patients even if they lack health insurance, and as Milton Friedman, the late great economist once said, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

     The SCOTUS also ruled that the states can choose to opt out of the Medicaid expansion part of the bill without the federal government being able to punish them by threatening to take away all of their Medicaid funding.