Semi-profile in Courage: Chief Justice John Roberts

by Stephen Goldstein, email: trendsman@aol.com

            When the unthinkable happened, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts defected from his soul mates in the right-wing Supreme Court cabal and voted with his liberal colleagues to declare “Obamacares” constitutional, all hell broke loose. “Holy Oxycontin!” Rush Limbaugh allegedly screamed in private. George W. Bush almost rolled over in his golf cart. And John Boehner jumped out of his tanning bed half-baked. Justice Scalia may already be in therapy.

            In Florida, ground zero for opposition to health system reform, the news went down even harder. Former state Attorney General Bill McCollum, who initiated the lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court decision, looked like a teenager who hadn’t told his parents he dented the family car when I saw him interviewed by Greta van Susteren. Rick Scott, who funded a PAC to fight what became the Affordable Care Act and ran for governor so he could stop health system reform, is lucky he’s bald, or he would have torn out his hair. Word has it that the Roberts family has been permanently scratched from the Koch Brothers’ Christmas card list. 

            In disbelief, everywhere in Rightwingdom, the shocked were asking, “How dare Roberts break ranks? Where did he come off having an independent thought? Didn’t someone make him swear an oath always to do what Scalia says?” In the hollowest of hollow gestures, Speaker John Boehner announced that the U.S. House of Representatives would vote to overturn the Affordable Care Act. And in the spirit of bad losership, the tea party/GOP’s putative leader Mitt Romney announced, with bravado bordering on the absurd, that he would “repeal and replace” “Obamacares” within a nanosecond of his taking the oath of office.

            Predictably, the enraged Right everywhere—How dare Roberts do this to us?—is following Romney’s lead: promising without being able to deliver. They’ve got nothing to replace “Obamacares” with, except the current, unworkable status quo in healthcare delivery, sufficiently tweaked to ensure private interests can make bigger billions at the public expense without accountability, limitation, or conscience. “Romneyscares,” Mitt’s as-yet unexplained but certain to be horrific alternative to the now reaffirmed law of the land, depends on an alleged infallibility of “the market” to make healthcare “all better”—like it’s ever done so. It’s Rick Scott’s preferred solution on steroids.  

            Meanwhile in Florida, thrown for a loop by the supreme decision and violating his oath of office, Gov. Scott still won’t act like a grown-up, face reality, and follow the law of the land. He’s refusing even to implement a health insurance exchange, which allows individuals to compare plans and prices—a market-based feature of “Obamacares” which benefits consumers. He’s also committed to not expanding Medicaid. Expect the tea party/GOP Legislature to continue to try to wiggle out of “Obamacares,” even though doing so hurts millions of Floridians.

            Chief Justice Roberts is the master of doing the unthinkable—and redeeming himself. He flubbed administering the oath of office to President Obama at the Capitol and had to do it a second time in the Oval Office. With his vote upholding “Obamacares,” he’s set the stage for a second decision on health system reform. If Obama wins a second term with large enough majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats should pass “Medicare for All.” And Roberts with equal judiciousness should uphold its constitutionality.#