Here’s precisely why raising the Medicare eligibility age appears to be the only solution to keeping the program solvent: the Republican Party, which hates Medicare and always has, and the compliant DC news media, which self-consciously dittos the Republicans so as to not appear too “liberal,” say so.

And so it is.

But I probably don’t need to tell you that it’s really, really flipping stupid — times a thousand. And it’s simply designed to sabotage Medicare and the broader healthcare system.

During election campaigns the Republicans invariably pretend to be in love with Medicare, as Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan reminded us this year by turning the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare savings into a cudgel to flog the president and the Democrats as enemies of the program when in fact the opposite is true in nearly every way. Not only did Romney inject the $700 billion savings into the discourse as a campaign issue, it practically became a centerpiece of his campaign — not to mention one of his biggest lies. And now the same Republicans who joined Romney in this line of attack are insisting that Medicare be one of the programs on the fiscal cliff chopping block.

The idea is a familiar one. They want to raise the eligibility age from 65 to 67, and they’re receiving hearty endorsements from the cynical, nearsighted and compliant DC press. For example, within a strikingly revealing Politico exposé about creating the DC elite, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen wrote this:

They will also tell you Medicare, which is on pace to be insolvent in 12 years, is a much, much bigger mess and threat to long-term economic vitality — and much harder to solve. Yes, the rich need to get smaller benefits, but that is almost meaningless in terms of fixing it. Ultimately, many Americans will have to get less generous benefits that start to kick in at an older age — and those changes need to start a decade from now. Otherwise, the math simply doesn’t work.

This is the common wisdom. Sadly. The only way to “fix” Medicare, they say, is to stick it to regular Americans who need it the most. There’s no other solution, they say, other than to protect the rich and screw the middle class. And that’s precisely what they intend to do. It turns out that stripping 65- and 66-year-olds of Medicare benefits will cost those people two dollars for every dollar the government saves by keeping them out of the program.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in the first year alone such a shift in the eligibility age would save the government around $5.7 billion. Sounds great! But it’ll actually cost seniors and the system more than $11 billion in the first year. Matt Yglesias wrote:

That includes $3.7 billion in higher costs for 65- and 66 year-olds, $4.5 billion from employers through company-sponsored insurance, $0.7 billion from state governments, and $2.5 billion in higher average prices for third parties once younger seniors are shifted out of the Medicare risk-pool and into the general population.

And the (very liberal) Wall Street Journal agrees that raising the eligibility age is a huge mistake.

The Republicans don’t really care because the goal isn’t savings for the system — the goal is to begin a trend in which every time Medicare reform comes up, raising the eligibility age becomes the standard fare. So it gets rolled back and rolled back, while fewer and fewer people are covered. Undermine and weaken the system by a thousand cuts. And, as an added bonus, the roll back trend make totally sabotages the notion of actually expanding Medicare or implementing Medicare For All.

Ironically, and in spite of what The Very Serious Republicans and Politicos, expanding Medicare to include everyone is one of several ideas that could actually help both Medicare and the broader healthcare system. By allowing everyone, especially younger Americans, to enter the system, a tsunami of new revenue enters the system from a demographic that’s generally healthy and would use very little of the system’s resources. Plus, Medicare operates with greater efficiency and lower overhead than private insurance, while privately doctors, hospitals and pharmaceuticals remain intact and, in some cases, prosper because everyone can receive care and pay for it.

Shy of providing Medicare For All, what about passing the public option? During the debate over the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the CBO reported that the public option would save the government $68 billion over ten years. It would further bend the cost curve and, hell, if they decided to raise the Medicare eligibility age anyway, it would at least give seniors an affordable stop gap.

Or they could simply make the Medicare tax portion of the payroll tax progressive. In other words, in the current system everyone pays a Medicare tax of 1.45 percent, regardless of income. Why not apply the Medicare tax with 1.45 percent as the minimum bracket and increase the tax for subsequently higher income brackets, while means testing wealthier Americans to discover whether they really need the same benefits as middle and working class Americans?

Of course none of this is considered to be Very Serious enough, so unless there are some loud voices telling them to cut crap, the Very Serious people in Washington appear to be moving the direction of raising eligibility age. And it’ll be a disaster.

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By Bob Cesca: We’ve all known a kid who upon losing a board game would freak out, hurl the game across the room and storm off while shouting something like, “This game sucks anyway!” The modern permutation of this unhinged sour grapes tantrum is to chuck a video game controller at the TV. (I sheepishly raise my hand: guilty as charged on the latter.)

It’s one thing to suffer a momentary lack of self-control after losing a simple game, especially if the game is stupid, stupid, stupid and doesn’t give you a chance to fire before enemies converge on your position seemingly out of nowhere I hate that game! Phew. Sorry. But it’s another thing entirely to engage in this kind of silly, irrational behavior as a business owner, politician or political pundit in reaction to the results of an election. It’s no surprise the Republicans are doing exactly that.

Last week, I wrote about the nonsensical secession movement. But it’s safe to say that it was spearheaded by a marginal, fringe, kneejerk group of mostly throw-back libertarian goofballs. The following examples of apoplexy, however, have come from people who reside squarely in the mainstream of the conservative right.

Let’s begin with fast food executives like Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter who threatened to raise the price of his crappy pizzas by 11-cents per pie while laying off workers as a means to side-stepping the forthcoming Affordable Care Act requirement that businesses with 50 or more employees provide all full time workers with health insurance or else pay a fine of $2,000 per employee. After crunching the numbers, however, Schnatter only needs to raise the price tag of each pizza by around 5-cents and use the proceeds to pay for health insurance for all of his full time workers. Done. Unless Papa John’s customers are radical misers, they’ll never notice the almost nonexistent price increase.

Elsewhere, a Denny’s franchise owner in New York threatened to add a five percent surcharge on each bill to pay for his new Obamacare expenses. The backlash was swift. Denny’s sales dropped all across the nation, even though John Metz, the franchise owner, only controlled a few dozen restaurants. So naturally the CEO of Denny’s had to step in and force-feed Metz some much-need Xanax.

Denny’s chief executive John Miller privately reached out to Metz to express his “disappointment” with the Florida franchisee’s controversial statements about Obamacare, which sparked a wave of backlash for the national restaurant chain over the past few days. Metz released a statement Monday night expressing “regret” over his statements.

“We recognize his right to speak on issues, but registered our disappointment that his comments have been interpreted as the company’s position,” Miller said in an email to The Huffington Post.

So that’s it. Hopefully Miller schooled Metz on the financial benefits of having a healthy workforce: fewer sick days, greater productivity, less turnover and higher-quality workers. In the case of Schnatter, the additional cost of health insurance will only reduce his profit margin by around $5-8 million annually if he doesn’t nothing to offset the cost. And yes — only. Last year, Schnatter’s pizza empire reported a profit of $87 million on gross sales of $1.218 billion, and if the trend holds, his profits for 2012 should be even higher.

Absent legitimate business concerns, what else do we call this behavior other than a tantrum?

Speaking of profits, if the president gets his way and taxes are returned to the Clinton-era levels for incomes above $250,000 for families and $200,000 for individuals, reports are coming in from various small business owners that they inexplicably intend to sabotage their revenue streams in order to keep incomes under the $250,000 threshold. For example:

Kristina Collins, a chiropractor in McLean, Va., said she and her husband planned to closely monitor the business income from their joint practice to avoid crossing the income threshold for higher taxes outlined by President Obama on earnings above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

Ms. Collins said she felt torn by being near the cutoff line and disappointed that federal tax policy was providing a disincentive to keep expanding a business she founded in 1998.

“If we’re really close and it’s near the end-year, maybe we’ll just close down for a while and go on vacation,” she said.

It’s shocking that they’re successful business people, given their total ignorance of how taxes work. At the very least they ought to fire their accountant. But, once again, I don’t think this has anything to do with reality and everything to do with acting out like spoiled, petulant children.

Here’s how the tax code really works. If the Bush tax cuts expire on income higher than $250,000, the slightly higher tax rate will only apply to income over $250,000 — not the entire sum of $250,000. In other words, if the Collins family earns $251,000 next year, they will only pay a higher marginal tax rate on $1,000, not $251,000. And that doesn’t even take into consideration various deductions and tax credits that would cumulatively give the Collins family a lower effective tax rate (the process by which Mitt Romney or Warren Buffet pays a tax rate in the range of 15%).

So these people are deliberately restraining their revenue potential because they’re pissed about the election. In my video game metaphor, this is not unlike bashing yourself in the head with a controller instead of hurling it across the room.

Then there are the red state governors who are refusing to implement the health insurance exchanges required in the Affordable Care Act. Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Rick Scott and the other usual suspects have stonewalled the law. Bobby Jindal, who not only blasted his own party for being “stupid” but who also criticized the stimulus while accepting gigantic stimulus checks, has also joined the blockade against Obamacare.

These so-called states’ rights Republicans obviously don’t realize that the federal government will simply create an exchange itself for any state that refuses. In other words, here’s a case where the states have total control and these governors have all but relinquished that control to the federal government — literally allowing a government takeover.

I can’t even imagine the tarring and feathering that would’ve taken place if any Democratic politician had refused to implement Medicare Part-D or the USA PATRIOT Act or had refused to allow the deployment of national guard units to Iraq. The outrage would’ve been punitive and nearly universal. I mean, look at what happened to former-Senator Max Cleland (D-GA) in the 2002 midterms when he dared to oppose the Iraq War. Karl Rove and the Republicans accused this triple-amputee Vietnam War veteran of being sympathetic to Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. Saxby Chambliss won the election and has currently joined the witch hunt against U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, even though he and George W. Bush presided over a six year span of time when there were 11 terrorist attacks on various U.S. consulates resulting in dozens of casualties.

And finally, an article about kneejerk, childish reactions to the election wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the latest gibberish from Dean Chambers, the “portly” founder of Unskewed Polls. Immediately after the election, Chambers blamed me for his homophobic rant against Nate Silver. Yes, really. He blamed me. You know, because Republicans are all about personal responsibility. Evidently, Chambers objected to an article in which I described him as “portly” in an attempt to visually and professionally contrast him with Silver. Chambers is the “Bizarro Nate Silver,” I wrote. So naturally Chambers lashed out against… Silver. Odd.

But that’s not the worst of it. Chambers launched a new site called “Barack O’Fraudo.” I’m not making that up. Barack O’Fraudo. First of all, what’s the deal with the name? Chambers seems to have combined the president’s first name with an Irish version of the word “fraud” and tossed in a random “o” at the end — the president’s actual last name ends with an “a.”

The mission, as I predicted weeks ago, is to unskew the results of the election by smoking out cases of voter fraud orchestrated by Obama campaign. Chambers is back to doing what he does best: drawing wild conclusions from numbers he doesn’t fully understand. He’s pinpointed cases of alleged fraud in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida, and has therefore stripped 80 electoral votes away from the president. But, strangely, he doesn’t give those electoral votes to Romney — yet.

Four years ago, when the president won the first time, fringy Republicans merely threatened to “Go Galt,” in reference to the John Galt character in Atlas Shrugged who accumulates a group of wealthy disciples to stop contributing to the economy, thus bringing it to its knees. This time around it seems as if this conservative whiny freak-out is a futile extension of that initial effort. It won’t work and, in the final analysis, it will only serve to further embarrass and discredit a conservative movement that’s already in serious trouble. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From TPM:

Late last week more than a dozen Republican governors declared that they will not build the insurance market exchanges called for by the Affordable Care Act, including prominent names like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, John Kasich of Ohio, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Perry of Texas.

On Monday, Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma joined them, declaring in a statement that it “does not benefit Oklahoma taxpayers to actively support and fund a new government program that will ultimately be under the control of the federal government.”

The original deadline for states to notify the Department of Health and Human Services on whether they intend to build their own exchange was last Friday, but the administration extended it to Dec. 14. About a dozen Republican governors are weighing their options, including Chris Christie of New Jersey, Rick Scott of Florida and Terry Branstad of Iowa.

The Affordable Care Act encourages each state to build and operate its own exchange — a regulated, subsidized marketplace where consumers and small businesses can shop for insurance plans. If a state declines, the federal government has the power under the health care reform law to build one for it.

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James Kwak provides an enlightening analysis of the GOP argument that the individual mandate is an oppressive tax on the middle class. His conclusion:

In short: Very few people are even theoretically subject to the tax, and most of them are made much better off by the law, since they are transfer beneficiaries.

How can this be? How can a law make everyone better off? Well, it doesn’t. There is a tax-and-transfer element to the Affordable Care Act. The main people who are paying more are the rich (because of a Medicare payroll tax surcharge) and those with good health plans (because of the excise tax on “Cadillac plans”). In addition, the new spending is financed in part by reductions in Medicare spending; those reductions may or may not result in reduced availability of care for Medicare beneficiaries.

The Affordable Care Act is not painless, and there are definitely taxes involved. But the individual mandate “tax” is not one of them.

Of course, Romneycare wasn’t an oppressive tax on the middle class because the definition of ‘mandate’ is apparently different in Massachusetts….

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In case you missed it, here’s what we covered at The Daily Banter this week!: We looked at New York Time’s columnist Thomas Friedman’s fast food intellectualism, and analyzed Obama’s use of Karl Rove’s election tactics for the 2012 Presidential race. Bob Cesca tore into Republicans threatening armed rebellion over the health care ruling, and dismantled the Republican myth that the Affordable Care Act is the biggest tax increase in history. Chez Pazienza weighed in on Anderson Coopers revelation that he’s gay, and then did the weekly mailbag drunk….

Have a great weekend!

Ben (Editor)

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ADAPT Medicaid Rally (Photo credit: SEIU International)

by Charles Ornstein: For many people without insurance, a key question raised by the Supreme Court’s decision today to uphold the Affordable Care Act is whether states will decline to participate in the law’s big Medicaid expansion.

Although the court upheld the law’s mandate requiring individuals to buy insurance, the justices said the act could not force states to expand Medicaid to millions by threatening to withhold federal funding.

Republican leaders of some states already are saying they are inclined to say thanks, but no thanks.

Tom Suehs, the Texas Health and Human Services Executive commissioner whose state could cover an additional 1.8 million people by 2019, praised the court for giving “states more ability to push back against a forced expansion of Medicaid. The court clearly recognized that the Affordable Care Act put states in the no-win situation of losing all their Medicaid funding or expanding their programs knowing that they would face billions of dollars in extra costs down the road.”

The act, signed by President Obama in March 2010, required “states to extend Medicaid coverage to non-elderly individuals with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line, or about $30,700 for a family of four,” according to a March 2012 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. The extension was expected to cover nearly 16 million people by 2019, one of the law’s main ways of reducing the ranks of the uninsured.

The 26 states that challenged the health care law together account for an estimated 8.5 million of those who would benefit from Medicaid’s expansion by 2019, more than half the total, according to ProPublica’s analysis of an Urban Institute report prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Stanford University health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya wrote on Stanford’s medical school blog that some states may opt out. “Cash-strapped states will almost certainly consider this option since they will ultimately be on the hook for financing at least a portion of this expansion,” he wrote. “If enough states decide to deny the Medicaid expansion, this may substantially reduce the ability of ACA [the Affordable Care Act] to expand insurance coverage.”

Medicaid is a joint state-federal program that provides health coverage to the poor and disabled, with states putting up a portion of the money and the federal government funding the rest. Each state’s matching percentage is based on per capita income.

According to a separate Kaiser foundation report, “Medicaid currently provides health coverage for over 60 million individuals, including 1 in 4 children, but low parent eligibility levels and restrictions in eligibility for other adults mean that many low income individuals remain uninsured. The ACA expands coverage by setting a national Medicaid eligibility floor for nearly all groups.”

Under the law, the federal government would cover nearly 93 percent of the costs of the Medicaid expansion from 2014-22, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“Specifically, the federal government will assume 100 percent of the Medicaid costs of covering newly eligible individuals for the first three years that the expansion is in effect (2014-16). Federal support will then phase down slightly over the following several years, and by 2020 (and for all subsequent years), the federal government will pay 90 percent of the costs of covering these individuals. According to CBO, between 2014 and 2022, the federal government will pay $931 billion of the cost of the Medicaid expansion, while states will pay roughly $73 billion, or 7 percent.”

States that challenged the law argued that it was coercive to require them to either expand Medicaid or risk losing all Medicaid funding, a practical impossibility given the size of the program in most states. The court ruled that while it was constitutional for Congress to offer states money to expand Medicaid, it could not take away funding for their existing program if they declined, according to SCOTUSblog.

Immediately after the ruling, some Republican state officials said they were inclined to reject the new federal money, although there has been no deadline set for doing so.

In Missouri, according to The Associated Press, “House Majority Leader Tim Jones says the Republican-led Legislature will not consider the expansion. Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder called the Medicaid expansion a ‘break-the-bank provision.’”

The Birmingham Business Journal said that “opting out of the Medicaid expansion seems increasingly likely for Alabama 2014 though Medicaid officials said they were still reviewing the court’s ruling.”

After all, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said, “The health care law is an overreach by the federal government that creates more regulation, bureaucracy, and a dramatic increase in costs to taxpayers.”

And South Dakota’s attorney general, Marty Jackle, was likewise blunt: “I am relieved that the Act’s Medicaid expansion has been declared unconstitutional and has been significantly limited by the Court.”

That said, rhetoric does not always translate to action. Many Republican governors said they would not accept funds from the 2009 stimulus package, but they ended up taking the money in the end. Three governors, in Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio, turned down money to build a high-speed rail line. Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford tried to turn down federal education stimulus money, but his state Supreme Court rejected that. And former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin rejected some state energy funding, but her Legislature overruled her.

ProPublica reporter Michael Grabell contributed to this report.

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Don't celebrate too soon, the fights not over by a long way.

By Chez Pazienza: Hungover from all that celebrating in the wake of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act? Well, with the cold light of a new day, hopefully, comes the realization that this little victory doesn’t in any way mean that the overall battle is over when it comes to trying to provide Americans with health care that won’t either leave them to die or just kill them with bills.

It took all of about five minutes for the right to completely lose its collective shit over the high court’s ruling and what’s important to keep in mind going forward is that — in keeping with tradition — Republicans absolutely will not let it stand and will never let it go. Get ready for weeks, months and years of attempts to repeal the ACA outright or clever back-door legislative tricks aimed at whittling away at it piece by piece; the over-the-top, drama queenie rhetoric from the usual Republican mouthpieces all but confirms this.

Take, for example, the words of douchey Breitbart non-journalist Ben Shapiro, who tweeted that the Supreme Court’s decision not to strike down a measure that attempts to guarantee affordable health care for millions of people represents, literally, “the end of America as we know it.” Or maybe Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, who calls the ACA a “crushing blow to freedom.” Or former Michigan GOP spokesman Matt Davis, who fired off an e-mail wondering aloud if “armed rebellion” was now justified in the wake of the ruling. Or libertarian Christ child Rand Paul, who didn’t even bother disagreeing with the decision but instead went right to dismissing it as unconstitutional, regardless of what the highest court in the land had to say.

It was Paul’s reaction that was both especially irksome and not the least bit surprising, mostly because it so perfectly summed up the entire right-wing mindset and illustrates where their blind outrage comes from and how it will continue to manifest itself. It’s all there: the complete ignorance as to how our government works; the arrogant belief that any reality that challenges conservative demands, be it a decision by the voters or the Supreme Court, can be casually dismissed as illegitimate; the unwavering obstinacy and vow to fight on no matter how many times they’re told that they can’t have it their way. This is the kind of thinking and behavior we’ve come to expect from the modern Republican party: From their willingness to hold the entire country hostage in what should have been an entirely routine and apolitical debate over the debt ceiling, to the insane conspiracy theories they concoct or enable to demonize Barack Obama as an impostor whose presidency isn’t legally valid, to their insistence in fighting and refighting battles they lost decades ago, today’s Republicans simply refuse to take no for an answer.

What’s more, their go-to tactic for getting their demands met involves behaving like your average six-year-old: they stick their fingers in their ears, then stomp and scream in the hope that we’ll all relent just to get a little peace and quiet, that we’ll ultimately value our sanity more than our political ideals.

This is what we have to look forward to in the health care battle — and yes, it’s still a battle. We may have won a skirmish, but for conservatives the larger war remains and will always be waged. This fight isn’t over for them. It will never be. Not until they’re satisfied on this issue and every other one and until they’re given back complete control of our government. This is simply the way the Republicans are these days. Give them what they want and no one gets hurt. A complete refusal to accept any way other than their own — anyone other than themselves — as legitimate. Screw the will of the people, the good of the country, or the rule of law — none of that can even be present when the GOP isn’t in charge or isn’t getting what it wants.

The only hope for progress is to be as ruthless, relentless and cunning as they are. Because they’re not going to give up on this or anything else they petulantly demand.

This fight is just starting for them. As they say, an elephant never forgets.

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President Barack Obama's signature on the health insurance reform bill at the White House, March 23, 2010. The President signed the bill with 22 different pens. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Bob Cesca: Yesterday, I covered the new Reuters/Ipsos poll showing the infuriatingly contradictory views on the Affordable Care Act. But what I didn’t note was that Republicans, naturally, are the most infuriatingly contradictory of bunch.

Okay, I know. Duh, right?

They’re always contradictory about everything. They hate “socialism” while sending their kids to public schools. They claim to be the party of law and order, and yet they don’t mind allowing police officers and firefighters to be sacked in the midst of their spastic Johnny-Come-Lately crush to destroy government spending (government spending was lovely during the Bush years). Ron Paul, the most conservative Republican in nearly a century and a staunch Ayn Rand libertarian, gladly accepts Social Security benefits. Mitt Romney is a computer generated spreadsheet of contradictions unraveling every time he opens his digitally-animated yammer.

In fact, it’s a miracle more Republican heads don’t explode on a daily basis out of the sheer cognitive energy generated by their gray matter racing in two separate and distinct directions.

Goddamn socialism is evil so get your government paws off my Medicare — POP! SPLAT!

Support the troops! But torture the enemy with such viciousness that it encourages the enemy to torture the troops with greater ferocity — KERPLOP!

Predictably, Republicans love the Affordable Care Act, too. They just don’t know it. And if you recite these poll results to any of them, make sure to bring goggles and a protective Gallagher-style tarp because heads will explode like the most watery summertime watermelons.

–Reuters/Ipsos found that 80 percent of self-identified Republicans support the idea of healthcare exchanges — pooling health insurance and distributing it among recipients to get lower group rates.

–Around 52 percent of Republicans like the idea of forcing corporations to offer health insurance plans to employees.

–The same percentage of Republicans support allowing young people to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26.

–Nearly 60 percent of Republicans support that idea of government subsidies to help middle and working class families pay for health insurance.

–The pre-existing conditions language in the law? A massive 78 percent of registered we-hate-Obamacare Republicans support that part of the law.

In other words, Republicans — more so than the rest of the population — hate the law, but love everything in the law.

By the way, independent swing voters? They support the above provisions by nearly unanimous margins — in the 70 and 80 percentile range.

So what does this tell us? Mainly, Republicans love the message but hate the messenger. They love what’s in the law, and probably wish that a Republican — because of the word “Republican” — invented it (like David Putty from Seinfeld, they have to support their team even if it means dressing up in stupid face makeup).

This president has bent over backwards and angered parts of his base as well as chunks of the progressive movement in order to reach out to Republicans, and, in spite of his efforts, Republicans hate him more than Satan and Stalin and the very rare demon Satanstalin combined, because AM talk radio and Fox News told them so. Hell, the individual mandate, which Republicans hated in the Reuters poll results, was invented by Republicans! But remove the name “Obama” from this legislation, and they love, love, love it by both majority and supermajority margins.

Once again, it’s all about the reasonable African American smart guy liberal. They hate that guy. But they love his healthcare reform law.

Now if by some twist of reasoning they could reach the conclusion that the man and his laws are intertwined, perhaps Republicans would be easier to deal with. But for now, they’ll continue to look like confused screechers who are incapable of realizing how buffoonishly contradictory they appear in light of polling and basic math.

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The US supreme court confronted what one justice characterised as a choice between a “wrecking operation” and a “salvage job” as it considered the future of Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reforms if a key component is found to be unconstitutional.

In a third and final day of an unusually long hearing Wednesday on the politically charged legislation, the court heard from its opponents that the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act should be struck down if, as looks possible, the justices find a requirement for almost all Americans to buy medical insurance to be unconstitutional.

Paul Clement, acting for 26 US states that oppose the legislation, said that the requirement for mandatory insurance is designed to fund many of the law’s other reforms. He said that without the funding, they are unworkable.

“If the individual mandate is unconstitutional, then the rest of the act cannot stand,” said Clement.

The government acknowledged that the loss of the insurance requirement will make some other parts of the legislation unworkable. It said that the loss of funds from about 40 million more people paying insurance would cause the collapse of some new requirements, such as a bar on insurance companies turning away people with pre-existing conditions. But it argued that most of the hundreds of other provisions of the act could remain.

Read more at the Guardian…

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