These two Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare are far more harmful than Obamacare itself.
While the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” will stifle medical advancement to such an extent that medical research may for all practical purposes grind to a halt (or more accurately, focus only on controlling costs and not on saving or improving lives), that damage is limited to only one aspect of our lives.
The precedent that the federal government has the authority to order us to engage in commerce against our will is far worse. We must buy an unwanted product (clearly unwanted, or purchase would not need to be mandatory) at the price set by the private entities in our state, whether or not we want that product, not as a condition of driving on state roads but as a condition of breathing. This is a horrendous precedent for everyone who does not engage in crony capitalism. Freedom is dead.
It gets worse. Under the first Obamacare Supreme Court opinion, Obamacare is a tax despite the clear and unanimous declaration by supporters that it is not a tax and the absence of any indication in the statute that it was intended to be a tax. Under the second Obamacare Supreme Court opinion, “Exchange established by the State” means “Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government”, an absurd and illogical construction. The rule of law is dead.
Essentially, we are no longer a constitutional republic with limited government. We now have a king, and the king has almost unlimited unilateral power to make or repeal law by decree or equivalently by issuing regulations.
To put it mildly, I am now beyond the point where I was worried about America’s survival as a free country, and I will now structure my life under the assumption that the free country I knew no longer exists in any meaningful sense.
Shopping list: gold, silver, lead, brass, food, medicine, soap, . . .
Contact you State government - Senators, Representatives, Governor - and tell them to stand against the Federal assault.
There are no states anymore.
We have a Central Government that can dictate anything it wishes.