(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The US Supreme Court ruling, upholding most of President Barack Obama's healthcare reforms proposals, will come as a big relief for the president's re-election campaign.
Obama, who vowed to reform the country's bloated and wasteful healthcare infrastructure, steered the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, through the US Senate in December 2009 and the House of Representatives three months later.
The landmark legislation, which would expand health insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans - sharply reducing the number of uninsured Americans from the present 50 million - has been one of the most significant achievements of Obama's presidency. With the Supreme Court now endorsing the legislation, voting 5-4 in favour of the act, what seemed to be a flagging campaign for the American president's re-election, will now get a new lease of life.
Interestingly, it was the crucial vote by Chief Justice John Roberts, a Republican appointee, who joined four other judges appointed by Democrats, which helped save the act. Obamacare aims to fix America's healthcare system, expanding coverage to millions who are outside the system and also curbing soaring costs. Health spending in the US has doubled to more than $2.6 trillion over the past 10 years, but despite escalating costs, an estimated 45,000 people die every year because of lack of health insurance.
The vast majority of the poor who are outside the healthcare net are forced to visit hospital emergency rooms, pushing up costs for all. Obamacare, by providing insurance coverage to the poor, aims at not just saving lives, but even slashing healthcare budgets. The chief justice in his order pointed out that while the federal government did not have the power to order people to buy health insurance it has the power to impose "a tax on those without health insurance." He declared the act to be constitutional as the individual mandate requirement, which makes it compulsory for people to buy health insurance by 2014 or face a penalty, could "reasonably be read as a tax."
Republicans, however, see red when they hear the word 'tax.' So even as they failed to get the court declare the act as unconstitutional, they are gloating over the fact that they have a stick now to beat Obama and the Democrats with. The voting public has a distaste for the word tax and it is easy to manipulate fears of the imposition of a new tax.
Differences though appear to have surfaced in the Republican camp, with an aide to Mitt Romney, the likely GOP Presidential nominee - and author of a similar healthcare law in the state of Massachusetts when he was the governor - reiterating that the mechanism to enforce mandate was a penalty and not a tax.
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