Sometimes I get sad. I am health care professional. I want to see everyone healthy or at least have the unhealthy ones be able to afford the care that me and my collegues in the other health professions provide. I don't want people to die because they can't afford healthcare.

But my labor, and the labor of my collegues is not a "right". And just because I do not feel that the Congress can constitutionally compel the private purchase of a private good on the entire citizenry does not make me an evil partisan ideologue.

Struck down 6-3.

If you have this stance, thats cool. But then you need to be morally consistent and refuse any treatment to folks who can't pay. Because as it is now healthcare providers (especially in ER) treat the folks who can't pay and then charge me more to maintain their salaries or the hospital's finances. We all know at the end of the day the ER docs and hospital are going to get paid, so if you don't want the gov to pick up the bill, you better start kicking the poor folks out the door.

(If it wasn't clear, I support UHC)

There is a third option. Charitable organisations which would spontaneously manifest to fund ER for the poor once we move on to a genuinely free market for health care!

I agree with you that the system we have now is inconsistant.

We either need to have a policy of kicking people out and/or not delivering care to those that can't pay OR have UHC.

Alito made this point during oral argument

Robert Reich thinks the public option might be back on the table if the individual mandate is struck down.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...b_1598796.html

Yeah, this. I can't think of the last "big" case that was decided by 7-2 or larger. So I tried to find out. This Wiki page lists 50* landmark decisions from 1990-present. Of these, 47 were decided by the full court.

5-4: 26 cases
6-3: 9
7-2: 4
8-1: 1
9-0: 7

The other three decided by a non-full court were 5-3, 6-2, and 7-1.

Note that some of these were kind of tough to assign, since the justices like to write these concur in part/dissent in part decisions. I tried to base the count on how they ruled on what was considered the main issue. This issue affected maybe five cases.

Of the cases that were 8-1 or 9-0, only big one was Clinton v. Jones. The others, while important and interesting enough, were nowhere near being front page news. Ruling against patient-assisted suicide and ruling for religious animal sacrifice and the like.

* One of the 52 listed isn't actually a SCOTUS case, and one is so "landmark" that it doesn't even get a non-stub Wiki page. Thus neither one is counted here.

Cite?

Interesting (I think so, at least) question:

If the Federal government can't mandate the purchasing of health insurance by citizens, then how can California mandate the purchase of car insurance by all drivers? So, if the individual mandate is struck down, will this mean that there is some chance of striking down the auto insurance mandate in CA and anywhere else that has one?

State rights.

Massachusetts already mandates buying health insurance and it isnt considered unconstitutional.

State and Federal powers are different. This ruling will have no effect on Romneycare's individual mandate in MA. Also, if your in Cali and don't want to pay for auto insurance don't drive a car.

There are two separate reasons why the auto insurance mandates won't get struck down. 1st, driving is a privilege under the law, no one is forced to get auto insurance. 2nd, the Obamacare ruling will only cover the federal governments ability to create interstate commerce, it won't have anything to do with the individual states.

10th Amendment.

.

Any case that is decided 5-4 is automatically going to be consider a "big" one because it was decided 5-4.

*sigh*

Read the Constitution. Especially read the 10th Amendment.

P.S. At the beginning of this country, some states had it so you had to be a member of a certain religion to vote, because the First Amendment only applied to the federal government.