Goldberg: Live free -- and uninsured

Supporters of President Obama's Affordable Care Act insist there are no losers under the healthcare law. That's just a Beltway fantasy.

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act wear masks of President Obama and the Grim Reaper as they demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court. (Alex Wong / Getty Images / June 28, 2012)

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare"), NPR's "Talk of the Nation" held a seminar of sorts at the Aspen Institute's legendarily pretentious Ideas Festival. Someone in the audience asked NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner this question: "Today's decision is a positive decision for the estimated 50 million uninsured Americans. Who are the losers today?"

Rovner seemed to struggle to find losers. She came up with insurance companies that want the so-called individual mandate — now a punitive tax according to the Supreme Court — to be much more punitive. After thinking through her answer, she later added that another group of losers might be the citizens of states whose governors opt to not participate in the law's expansion of Medicaid.


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For the record, there are losers under Obamacare. Here's a short list: 1) taxpayers who will carry the load of what the Congressional Budget Office says will be a $2-trillion price tag when the law is fully implemented; 2) the CBO also says it's likely that at least a few million workers will be pushed off their current insurance coverage, even though the president insists you can keep your existing insurance if you like it; 3) innumerable and unknowable numbers of sick people who will not be screened for various diseases because some bureaucrats' protocol says it's too expensive; 4) Roman Catholic and other religious institutions forced to violate their values; 5) a few million so-called freeloaders who don't want to buy health insurance for perfectly rational reasons.


DOCUMENT: Supreme Court ruling on healthcare law



Only a third of Americans fully supported the law when it was signed, according to a NYT/CBS poll, and today that number stands essentially unchanged. In fairness, a fifth of the law's opponents are left-wing voters who would prefer a single-payer system that doesn't involve incestuous collusion between government and big business. I don't support socialized medicine, but I can respect this sort of principled objection.



I admit I have an old-fashioned conception of what our country is supposed to be about. And people like me are losers under Obamacare too.


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