Parker: The Grinch who stole Obamacare

Published November 17, 2013 1:01 am




So now President Obama has apologized for real. On Thursday, he told Americans, "I hear you loud and clear" (Do I hear an echo?) and announced that insurance companies can ignore the law for a year. The several million Americans whose policies were canceled, or were scheduled to be canceled, can keep them — or get them back — assuming state regulators and insurance companies comply.

It isn't clear whether insurers can, or will, based on the assurances of someone whose credibility isn't exactly soaring. Meanwhile, the newest promise dovetails with another earlier delay granted to businesses with at least 50 employees (just 3.6 percent of employers), which were given another year to comply with the ACA.


In the wake of Obama's latest tweak, two salient questions have emerged: Can the ACA survive? Can the president even do what he just did, legally?

Though brilliant minds may differ, the president is probably within bounds, according to a compelling argument by Simon Lazarus, senior counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center. The relevant constitutional text, he writes on The Atlantic's website, requires that the president "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," a broad-enough concept to allow for judgment in the execution.



Similarly, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky notoriously said that his job was to make sure Obama was a one-term president, it wasn't because of race nor was it immediate to the president's election. McConnell made his remark in October 2010 on the eve of the midterm elections and after Obamacare passed without a single Republican vote.

In other words, Republicans oppose Obama's policies, not the man, because they believe the president will so inexorably change the structure of our social and economic system by mandating and punishing human behavior that nothing less than individual freedom is at stake. Under present circumstances, this hardly seems delusional. Does anyone really believe that subsidized policyholders with pre-existing conditions won't eventually face other mandates and penalties related to their lifestyle choices?

Finally, Democrats incessantly seize upon their prize trophy: The U.S. Supreme Court validated Obamacare. True-ish. The high court didn't endorse Obamacare as a good idea. It didn't even find the individual mandate constitutional. It ruled that the mandate/penalty is constitutional only if the penalty is viewed as a "tax." If one were to examine this gift horse's mouth, one would have to note that, funny, but throughout the health care debate and oral arguments, and even now, Democrats have insisted that the penalty is not a tax. Paging George Orwell.



Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.