You really can’t have it both ways, bmeisen.  Either argue that because the uninsured DO get treatment today “their refusal to (purchase insurance) constitutes a public liability”, or argue that we OUGHT to insure them because “49 states have allowed the uninsured to suffer” (i.e., they DON’T get treatment now).

However, the argument is invalid either way when applied to the ACA, because the ACA is not the only way to cover the currently uninsured and under-insured (nor does it cover all of them anyway:  even in 2019 the CBO estimates that well over 20 million people in this country will remain uninsured, and the number underinsured may well be much higher). By contrast, Medicare can Constitutionally be extended to cover everyone, cover them better than the ACA ever will, and save a great deal of money in the bargain.

Medicare for All even enjoys majority public support:  all we need to do is whip our national elected officials into line to pass it.  And the demise of Obamacare may be the incentive we need to do that (since otherwise the costs of Obamacare will just slowly bleed us to near-death before we get sufficiently upset to demand something better).

When the risk is mine and mine alone, insurance is an option. Individuals and companies are compelled to buy insurance when their refusal to do so constitutes a public liability. While the nuclear power industry figured out how to skirt this fact of life, gas station owners, car owners, urban property owners, among other lesser entities, generally face the music.

To date 49 states have allowed the uninsured to suffer - this despite widely held beliefs about the relationship between society and the individual, that we should be neighborly and helpful, be willing to carry our brother’s burdens, beliefs that are collectively known as the Judeo-Christian tradition.

You’re confused, E. J., and I would have expected better.

The Court was not asked to adjudicate the question of “an uninsured person getting expensive treatment that others—often taxpayers—have to pay for” (which to all appearances is already Constitutional, or at least hasn’t yet been successfully challenged):  it was asked to rule on the individual mandate.

Now, if the individual mandate were the ONLY way to achieve, say, universal coverage (which, by the way, the ACA does not achieve), then appealing to universal coverage as an over-riding reason to allow the individual mandate even if it would otherwise not pass Constitutional muster might make at least SOME sense.  But since there are other eminently Constitutional ways to achieve universal coverage (e.g., extending Medicare to cover everyone), it’s entirely reasonable to consider the individual mandate solely on its own Constitutional merits (to do otherwise would be to engage in precisely the same legislative - vs. judicial - activity that you profess to abhor from the Court).

Some recent Court decisions may have been blatantly ideological in nature, but in this particular case it appears to be the more progressive members of the Court who aren’t taking the Constitution quite as seriously as perhaps they should (unless one buys the argument that the interstate commerce clause, already stretched beyond recognition, should be stretched even more).

Shadowcii, an honest question, not meant to insult or belittle.  I really wonder
what you mean in this passage:

- YES, AUTHOR, your power to rule me is limited.  As
is my power to rule you.  We don’t live in a
totalitarian democracy yet- and I will leave the
moment we do, don’t worry.  You can have your
communism all to yourselves.  As it is the Blatant
open Fascism we find ourselves in the middle of is
crashing down around us.  Our only salvation will be
individual liberty.

Who’s the ruler?  The Author? Can you name a totalitarian
democracy, or the features that can describe one?  I’m
curious, only.  I don’t know the meaning of this passage.

The author pleads for justice by saying:

“A Supreme Court that is supposed to give us justice will instead deliver ideology.”

But what kind of justice is it exactly?

The purpose of the American judiciary here is to determine whether the law is or is not constitutional. Based on our constitution, it clearly is not.

The “justice” that the author pines for doesn’t exist in the real world, and frankly isn’t even “justice” in the first place.

If in order to give someone “justice” you must first enslave others to pay for it, then that certainly isn’t justice, at least not to those who have been enslaved.

fs

Don’t the states compel us to buy auto and home insurance?

i am not sure what dionne means with his [and others’] “liberal judges”, and
“activist judges”.
but regardless of what he means with such linguistic usages, i place such judges
just a tad right of mussolini or a tad left of hitler.
in addition to that, both wings of the supreme court are totally controlled by the
ONE PERCENT; and with help from the TEN TO TWENTY% [or even 95%] of
americans. [however, the supreme god is always THE ONE PERCENT or rather
OOO1%; and it is its will be done and forever and not just for day]
yes, of course, one can attempt to split supreme court, ONE PERCENT or even 95%
in two wings: liberal one and conservative one—it’d make no iota difference to the
people americans have been slaughtering by the numbers or people without jobs,
homes, healthcare, etc