I wrote a quick piece for the Daily Caller about the Obamacare ruling that gets to the nub of what happened today. From “Obamacare Ruling Reflects Technocratic Imperative:”
Why is anyone surprised? Obamacare was never going to be overturned. Not that it is constitutional, as the Constitution was originally conceived. It surely isn’t. But that Constitution has been terminally ill for a long time. Now it is dead.
Why would the Supreme Court’s conservative chief justice rewrite the individual mandate’s penalty to be a tax, when the law’s authors unequivocally stated it was not a revenue generator during the legislative process? Let’s call it the “technocratic imperative” — faith in big government solutions for societal problems — a mindset that generates a far stronger gravitational pull than the standard conservative/liberal paradigm. The technocratic imperative is why, when push comes to shove, conservative judges almost always move “left” and liberal judges almost never move “right.”
It’s about mindset and overarching worldview.
I point out that a legal attack was met mainly by a policy response and reiterate points I have made here before, and so I won’t repeat them. I conclude:
With the coming of the Obamacare decision, a new era has now fully dawned for the United States of America — even in the unlikely event that Obamacare is legislatively repealed. The beating heart of the Affordable Care Act is technocratic. Within the next few years, unelected and unaccountable bioethical cost/benefit boards of experts will decree from central control what (and perhaps, who) is covered by health insurance, and what (and perhaps, who) are not — just as happens in places like the United Kingdom. The Independent Payment Advisory Board even has power over a presidential veto regarding areas within its jurisdiction.
In this sense, think of Obamacare as our Brussels, the E.U.’s bureaucratic central control center. The cornerstone been laid for the construction of a full-blown bureaucratic state. Limited government is dead. Long live the technocracy!
Anti Obamacarians can win the coming election and repeal the law. It won’t be easy and might require the trashing of the filibuster, which I am loath to support. But I do think we can emasculate the Independent Payment Advisory Board and other aspects of centralized control. That may be where our most vigorous efforts should be focused.
In the meantime, I mourn the loss of what was and worry about what will be.
