Hey conservative! Yeah you, doing a jig and high-fiving your buddies now that it's starting to look like the Supreme Court might not actually just roll over for the individual mandate. What do you think is going on here? Have you learned nothing in the past three years?
Oh, I know, you think the president is a detached, hyper-partisan goof who is way in over his head. You think the people he's surrounded himself with are a bunch of incompetent buffoons, typified by that preposterous performance at the Supreme Court this week by Solicitor General Verrilli. You probably think that, finally, a win for the good guys is on the horizon.
I, unfortunately, am the Crusher of Silly Dreams today, and I'm here to beat you about the head and shoulders with truth. The truth lies not in the panicked, breathless reporting of CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin as it dawns on him that the individual mandate may indeed be struck down due to its abject unconstitutionality. The truth is most certainly not that if this happens it's a victory for freedom and liberty in America even though the ignorant are selling it to you that way. The truth is absolutely not that the administration "has no Plan B" for if the individual mandate is struck down.
Come on, you say. You're about to accuse me of playing for the other side. That couldn't be farther from the truth either. And once I explain the truth to you, I expect I'll hear one of two sounds: the sound of your facepalm or the sound of you not getting it until it happens, the latter of the two sadly having become the theme song of the tattered fragments of the conservative/constructionist movement of late. (But just for the record, I want the entire law struck down. Strike down part of it and the remainder only becomes even more toxic.)
So let me spell it out for you: The individual mandate was meant to fail. It was always meant to fail. Think about this. What do they want? A single-payer system (government-run health care where the only payer is the government) where choice is killed and decisions are in the hands of government bureaucrats who know better than doctors what you should get. When do they want it? As soon as they can shove it down your unwitting throat. I mean, nothing about this is a surprise, go search YouTube and you'll find video of everyone who is anyone on the left all the way up to the President saying that's what they want to do to us, I mean for us.
Let's say the Supreme Court upholds the individual mandate in some bizarro world where the commerce clause can actually be interpreted such a way as to support forcing citizens to purchase product. (Hey, after some of the creativity that's been foisted on the first and second amendments over the years, it wouldn't be that much of a surprise, would it?) How does that get us to single-payer? Well, really, it doesn't any time soon because forcing everyone to get insurance means more income for the insurance companies to help cover the enforced losses. (Universal healthcare, yes, but remember, single-payer is the real goal here.) Hmm. This left, this president... this Reid and Pelosi... wanting the insurance companies to make more money or even break even? That would only be plausible if the insurance companies weren't corporations, or if any of these valiant, selfless public servant-leaders owned them. Or if they could be unionized or were green energy companies with pre-failed business models, but that's another whole galaxy of pudding.
So let's leave the insurance companies as standard corporations outside the left's "most-favored pet industry status" where they belong. What is the corporation-hating left's interest in insurance companies? Two-fold: their revenue stream and their destruction. How do you get rid of insurance companies and get their money? Actually, it's pretty easy. Make it so they have no choice but to supply coverage at any time, regardless of pre-existing condition, to anyone who applies even from the hospital and force them to compete against the federal government's printing presses. Premiums naturally skyrocket, employers drop coverage and opt to pay the $2,000 fine per employee over the five-figure cost of coverage. Private insurers go out of business and viola! Single-payer government-run health care. Government is all that remains, insurance premiums are converted to taxes, nothing to it. But, you say, that's too obvious, hardly anyone who hasn't been mind-faked as badly as say someone in the Occupy false movement would ever go for that. (Sigh, more pudding.) And you would be correct. They barely even went for it even with the individual mandate, which apparently was enough to make the insurance companies betray themselves and get in line behind it. Apparently people figured if the insurance companies think it's ok then it must be ok enough that I'll get to keep my insurance.
In a nutshell, what if you passed a law that forced huge costs and liabilities upon the insurance industry that would normally make it impossible for them to continue, but then promised them tens of millions of young, new customers who are cheap to cover to refill the coffers? Yeah, dogs behind a meat truck. (Yes, there used to be meat trucks.)
So far so good, where's the evil plot, right? Imagine that the administration knew the individual mandate would fail SCOTUS, and wrote it specifically with that in mind. In other words, what if they intentionally wrote the law so that part of it would be struck down, leaving the rest to stand without it and do the job they couldn't really say the law was meant to do in the first place? It was meant to look like universal healthcare. It was meant to create single-payer healthcare, universal or not. And this is why all the waivers were granted; they don't matter. In a couple of years, they'll evaporate with the private insurers.
I know what you're thinking, provided you're one of the six people who have been paying any attention to this situation at all. "But there's no severability clause in the law, therefore if they strike down one part they have to strike it all down." Umm, no. Not even close. The only reason they would have to do that is if by striking down one part of it, the law becomes something that Congress didn't vote for; in other words, it has a completely different effect than the original bill. That does not apply to this situation. It may seem like it does, after all, wasn't this about all those poor people who can't get insurance? Think back. What did the Congress think they were voting on? Frankly, it's hard to guess, but mostly something that the president and his agonizingly brilliant henchpersons in the House and Senate claimed would lower the cost of healthcare despite the impossibility of comprehending it, or even reading it, before the vote was taken. 2,700 pages of "you have to pass it to see what is in it". Do you honestly think that any coherent argument could be made that by striking down any particular feature of this legislative hydra you've changed the intent of a law the lawmakers voting on it admittedly did not understand and thereby made it into something they did not think it was? Why did you think they had to vote on it before anyone read it? Plausible deniability. They knew it was a total lie before they got done killing the forest they printed it on, but if they could say they never had a chance to actually read it...
What, you don't think this is possible? You're still under the false impression that these are political Keystone Cops and ivory-tower academics who don't know what they're doing? I understand. The old saying goes, "The best place to hide an elephant is at the circus." (I'd love to make a wisecrack about the best place to hide a donkey, but I'll leave that to your imagination.) I was with you at first, I really wanted to think that this bunch really had no idea what they were doing. The problem is that they have a game plan, and they have tactics, they're following both to the letter and even broadcasting it for anyone who will pay attention because they think it's over and they've won. They have masterfully made it appear that they are bumbling, when what they're doing is more like a ballet. The game plan is "The Road We're Traveling", by Stuart Chase (1942). Chase is the guy who coined the term "The New Deal". And of course, the tactics are from Saul Alinsky's "Rules For Radicals". If you ever get bored, look up the dedication in "Rules For Radicals". Once you've read that, it will all become clear to you. Or, I suppose, you can take the blue pill, go back to your red-white-and-blue "we beat the commies" celebration and make believe that all is well when the individual mandate is struck down. If you're on the government plan in a few years because your insurer folded up and disappeared, I promise won't say anything if I see you acting surprised. I do have compassion. But in all seriousness, it's time to take the red pill. Going back to sleep is no longer an option. We're nearly defeated and we haven't even started fighting yet.
Someday I suspect we're going to look back on this day with a grudging admiration for a ruthless enemy who defeated us long before we even understood we were at war. The Progressives have been building this day for a hundred years. While we celebrate the possible death of the individual mandate, champagne bottles are waiting in undisclosed locations all over the left for the day the announcement of the things we are currently celebrating is made.
Solicitor General Verrilli's performance this week was not a failure. It was spit in the eye of the founders. It was a one-finger salute to those who love this country and wish to preserve it. It was Progressivism dancing on the grave of freedom.
