Justice Scalia's dissent in King v. Burwell strikes me as more persuasive than Chief Justice Roberts' majority opinion. Beyond that, a few additional observations in light of today's health care decision from the Supreme Court:
- It always seemed to me a long shot, and beyond that, a strategic and tactical mistake, to try a judicial-legal route to overturning ObamaCare rather than a political route. Scalia (or TGS, as the New York Sun calls him, for The Great Scalia) makes the point in his dissent that if the court had struck down the subsidies, Congress had plenty of ways to respond. But Congress has plenty of ways to respond to the status quo, too. Republicans need a majority in Congress and a president who can repeal the law and replace it with something better. If they can't make that case to the voters, then they don't deserve to have it handed to them by an unelected court. The political sphere may work this out without judicial intervention.
- In retrospect, Mayor Bloomberg looks even sillier than he ever did before for having opposed the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts. Mr. Bloomberg said, in essence, that Mr. Roberts would be too rigidly right-wing, particularly on the question of women's access to health care. If the ScotusCare decisions prove anything, it is that Mr. Bloomberg sure had that wrong.
