Well, That Was Fast

Judge Henry Hudson at work.

So, a conservative judge in Virginia just struck down the mandate in the HCR bill.  But remember, he's a conservative judge, so overturning the will of a duly elected legislature is NOT ACTIVISM because SHUT UP!

Now apparently he assumed severality (which wasn't in the bill because Obama forgot to use the bully pulpit for a single payer or something).  Severality means that he is only ruling the individual mandate unconstitutional, not the whole bill.  So most of the bill stands, but the mandate is gone.

Probably not, of course, this is one conservative judge in Virginia.  Eventually it will probably make it to the Supreme Court.  The argument that the commerce clause and the elastic clause don't apply here is a bit stretched.  Two other judges have ruled HCR constitutional.  If this was a three judge panel, he would have lost.

Where it really gets interesting is if somehow the mandate WERE to be killed by the Courts as legislative overreach.  Here's why:

As I mentioned (about an hour ago), the GOP basically exists to transfer wealth to the wealthy.  They exist to help, well, not business per se, but the people who own businesses.

And the health insurance industry NEEDS that mandate.

Without the mandate, the scenario would be that people would likely drop their insurance until they really needed it.  I can treat my own cold, but when I get diabetes, sign me up, Blue Cross!  Since insurance is pooled risk, you have to have a bunch of healthy people to pay for the ones who are sick.  The mandate insures that the pool is large enough to compensate for ending the odious practice of insurance companies dropping people who are actually sick.

So, the insurance industry needs the mandate like Ken Mehlman needs a man date.

But there are two wings to the GOP.  The corporatist wing and the confederate wing.  The confederate wing is still worried that the federal government might free their negroes  integrate their schools  interfere with markets.  It's all about states rights with these yahoos, because Mississippi is AWESOME, as long as you don't mind the illiteracy, teen pregnancies and high incidence of rickets.  Judge Hudson is clearly of the confederate variety, even if he sounds like a 17th century Dutch explorer.

Teabaggers are mostly the confederate GOP being bankrolled by anonymous donations from the corporate GOP.  This has worked for the corporate GOP in the past.  Since 1980, the GOP has been talking about abortion, but haven't really done anything about it.  Whatever gets the rubes to the polls.  They think they're voting to save the snowflake babies in the local in vitro clinic from the evils of curing Parkinsons, but in reality, they're voting to shave a few million off the Koch brothers' income tax.

Now, both sides are on a collision course.  The corporatists need the mandate to some degree.  The confederates hate it.  Most of the Federalist Society judges that the GOP has been cramming onto the bench are likely confederates, but there are enough corporatists to make the result in doubt.  Scalito's a confederate, but Roberts and Kennedy?

This will be interesting.

(Also, given how few of Obama's judges have gotten up or down votes in the Senate, THAT would be a good filibuster reform effort to address before the new Congress is seated.)