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Chief Justice John Roberts: ‘Judas’ Who Sold America (Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland)

“America’s hallowed freedom has been ruined by the so-called individual mandate: soon everyone will have to buy insurance or pay a penalty of 2.5 percent of one’s yearly income! … Of course, the most honest solution would be not to treat people without money at all and let them die at the hospital door like animals. Alas, in our times, one cannot count on total justice.”

By Mariusz Zawadzki

Translated By Halszka Czarnocka

July 2, 2012

Poland - Gazeta Wyborcza - Original Article (Polish)

“Traitor” is one of the gentler epithets being flung at Chief Justice John Roberts, after the ruling on Barack Obama’s reform of the health insurance system. On right-wing talk shows, the hosts are fuming into their microphones, shouting loudly and falling into hysterics in such an expressive way that one can almost hear them tearing their hair out by the fistful (I admit this might be an auditory hallucination, since America’s top radio guru is bald).

And all this because conservative Justice Roberts, nominated by George W. Bush, unexpectedly joined forces with four liberal justices, due to which the hated Obamacare reform has been saved by a 5 to 4 vote. This act of treason occurred during the most important Supreme Court session since at least 2000, when it decided the outcome of a presidential election.

Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana declared that the ruling is as tragic for America as the attacks of September 11 (for which he later apologized in writing). America’s hallowed freedom has been ruined by the so-called individual mandate: soon everyone will have to buy insurance or pay a penalty of 2.5 percent of one’s yearly income!

The individual mandate doesn’t limit the freedom of right-wing radio personalities, who have enough money and naturally, are insured. It does no harm to the poorest; who will be helped to buy insurance by the state. The individual mandate instead hits the middle class, or rather lower-middle class - people who somehow manage to make ends meet, but refuse to buy health insurance in order to few hundred dollars a month. These adventurers from the lower-middle class make up the nearly million and a half Americans who go bankrupt every year due after succumbing to a catastrophic illness that they have to pay for themselves.

Yes, this is not an erroneous assertion: in the U.S., a million and a half people each year lose everything they have in order to save their lives or health. Right-wing radio hosts have nothing more to say to these poor devils than a certain arsonist at the finale of - in my humble opinion - the best movie in the history of the Polish cinema: “Well, Mr. Borowiecki, you should have been insured!.” The movie, The Promised Land, is set in 19th century Łódź, during the pioneering days of capitalism – days that the American right waxes nostalgic about, as well as the billionaires who support them, and who rightly feel that under such conditions, they will be able to amass even more billions.

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The main argument against the individual mandate is that the state forces people to buy a given product (in this case an insurance policy). “Can government make me buy broccoli?” asked Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the representatives of that healthy, right-wing core of the Supreme Court. But that treacherous renegade Justice Roberts decided that the state cannot force people - that would be unconstitutional - but it can impose a tax in cases where a citizen fails to buy a product. This is not coercion: the citizen may choose what he prefers, the product or a tax.

The four defeated justices wrote in a separate dissenting opinion that Justice Roberts, “carries verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of the sophists.” Indeed, Roberts’s argumentation is rather convoluted.

On the other hand, it bears noting that a penalty in the form of a tax for not being insured is – from a statistical point of view – completely justifiable. It is a common practice in America that the uninsured, on becoming seriously ill, go to an emergency room, where they are treated even if they have no money. If payment cannot be extracted from them, the town, the state, or the federal government, foots the bill - meaning that the taxpayer pays. Therefore, the tax on a lack of insurance already exists; it is just hidden and every American, insured or uninsured, has to pay.

SEE ALSO ON THIS:  

Trouw, Netherlands: Health Care Result: U.S. Solidarity May be Strengthened  

Le Temps, Switzerland: U.S. Health Law: Another ‘Moral Victory’ for Obama  

Telegraph, U.K.: Why Health Reforms Could Determine Future of U.S. Politics    

Guardian, U.K.: Hyperbole and Health Care: Critics Respond    

Estadao, Brazil: New U.S. Health Care Differs Sharply from Brazil and Europe  

Folha, Brazil: Stop the Presses! Barack Obama Has Been Resurrected!  

Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany: Obama Made History - Whatever the Cost  

Financial Times Deutschland: U.S. Health Reform a Foreign Policy Win

L'Express, France: Astonishing: U.S. Republicans Turn Backs on History  

The Telegraph, U.K.: It's a 'Dark Day' for Freedom in America

The Times, U.K.: Win on Health is Obama Win Around the World  

The Times, U.K.: Now, Change Really is Coming to America

Estadao, Brazil: Americans 'Blind' to 'Extraordinary Progress' Under Obama  

Folha, Brazil: Brazil 'Envies' America's Public Health Care Debate

It remains a mystery why the right wing, so vocal about individual freedom and taking responsibility for one’s own decisions, is so insistent about supporting the current system in which everyone has to pay for the emergency treatment of free-loaders. Obama’s reform is more honest; at least it slaps the free-loaders with a 2.5 percent penalty.

Of course, the most honest solution would be not to treat people without money at all and let them die at the hospital door like animals. Alas, in our times, one cannot count on total justice.