Obamacare Is Saved Again — Next up — Crony Corporatism

The ruling is in and the debates have begun. It’s a great day for the left. It’s a great day for both parties. Democrats got what they wanted and Republicans now do not have to legislate. It’s a win-win.

But at least some on the right aren’t happy. Judge Andrew Napolitano‘s reaction on Fox News was stunned amazement. “What [Roberts] did was to suggest that plain, ordinary English words, which are not ambiguous in their meaning, somehow to six of the justices in the majority are ambiguous and therefore they can interpret them however they want,” said Napolitano.

“If they had followed the law, this would’ve been a very simple case. The language in the statute was very clear – and if they had interpreted the language the way it was written, the government would have lost,” said Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky.

Twila Brase of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom said, “Without the rule of law, it becomes the rule of power – all up to interpretation. Claims of intent and outside interpretations of intent will now rule, not the actual words written in the law. When we start allowing the loose interpretation of law based on after-the-fact claims of intent, the foundation of the rule of law crumbles.”

There are many more losers than winners that will come from this decision. Obviously, we conservatives, who have been warning of the pitfalls, lost. The American people are huge losers, as they will see care decline and prices skyrocket. The rule of law lost and, certainly, so did the Constitution. We voters also lost, for it is apparent that no other branch of government will stand up and challenge the black robed oligarchs.

The obvious winners include Obama and the rulers of the left. Their constituents will end up suffering mightily, but not a tear will be shed for them.

But another big winner is the mega insurance companies – the crony corporatists. IBD asks: “Does anyone remember president Obama promising that Obamacare will create a few giant healthcare oligopolies? Well it’s headed that way.”

FiveThirtyEight found that the stock price for the five major publicly traded Obamacare insurers, United Health, Anthem, Aetna, Humana, and CIGNA, “Rose an average of 1% over their opening price by 11 AM Thursday. The bounce started at approximately 10:10 AM, right when SCOTUSblog first announced the Supreme Court’s decision. That rise amounted to a $3 billion increase in the combined market capitalization of the five companies.”

So as good as it appears these five insurance companies have it now, things are going to get a lot worse – for everyone. Large insurers have merger and acquisition fever, which will lead to little competition and thus less service.

“Insurance companies are just following the lead of hospitals since Obamacare past. In fact, the number of hospital mergers in 2014 was 50% higher than it was the year before Obamacare past,” writes IBD.

Ciarin McEvoy of IBD reported Tuesday: “Health insurers are the latest to catch the health industries merger mania. Anthem is trying to take over CIGNA. Humana is being pursued by Aetna, which in turn is a target of United Health group. It could be just Anthem and United health when the dust settles.”

And I’m sure that will be great news for the consumer. Less competition is always good.

In the long term, there will be only one winner amongst the raft of losers, and that will be the government, in the form of single-payer. The script has been written and the actors are falling into line. We will end up with one or two mega insurers and the same amount of hospital corporations.

They will become “too big to fail” – so when they do, and they will, the government will be waiting in the wings to grab the reins and take them over.

And that’s been Obama’s and the socialist left’s vision all along. I wonder if they thought it would be this easy.