Thom,

of course Roberts voted for-it was, from inception, a repubLIEcon program, designed just as was bushdrug benefit to $ub$idi$e insurance-pharmaceutical companies-let's all be totally honest, and view whom bushbama placed upon his committee-which is how bushbama has gotten what he wants politically-stack committees. He froze out anyone who would speak for "public option", let alone single-payer. As we know (my wife is nurse in Berlin, Germany) U.S. healthPROFIT is 85% more expensive (while rated as worse) than German healthcare. There was NEVER any discussion of how these other systems do better...telling, again. As we know from expose' by bushbama grassroots organizer 2008, grassroots were thrown under the bus as soon as election was over. We also know from Wikileaks (official U.S. cables) bushbama had deal with bushcheney to NOT do accountability for war crimes (they are now convicted war criminals) for Iraq LIES..nor has bushbama held accountable Wall $treet. Totally ridiculous..meanwhile bushbama sets up to deconstruct Social Security to pay for Wall $treet crimes-fraud, which he has NOT exposed to TRUTH..nor has he ended bushcheney tax cuts-conducting "quantitative easing"=stimulus, which just as repubLIEcon "austerity" means U.S. taxpayers pay for Wall $treet $600 trillion derivatives monopoly-collusion-paper debt corruption....

PULEEEZ!!! THom... can you just be objective, without interjecting a slur against Ayn Rand, the originator of "being objective" (which you obviously are not), and just express your opinion???

Ayn Rand has nothing to do with this (she is dead you know) and you are very intelligent but so narrow minded... BTW how are those robot pigeons from the planet Xeno that you insist are "watching us."

Can you seperate your brilliant intelligent views of the political/social situation today in this country today from your wierd fantacies about Ayn Rand and Pigeons?

Think about it, "objectively." (If you can.)

When the republicans finish with their hissy-fit, maybe the two or three sane ones will realize that justice Roberts is actually looking out for their interests by keeping the door open to future "government mandates" which the republicans will try to impose if they ever get into power. Count on their brand of "mandates" to be much more egregious than anything we have seen yet.

Ironic, we had 5 blow out well fires here in North Dakota, one within miles of the missouri river. and once all the well fires were out, the state legislature passed a bill which states, Fracking is good ! and its most all republican. and as I stated while on air with thom, they flare off enough natural gas to heat 10,000 homes a day. and although they have this grandious plan to make the world work on natural gas, allegedly, they call the natural gas a waste product, now !

Agreed Hard work - Turn out is KEY Obama haters Fox fans will be out in full force This election is crucial I do not think they can repeal it after Supreme Court said IT stands . GOP Baggers will try evry scheme dirty trick to make Obama lose In my 68 yrs I never saw anything like this .I am a recovering GOP voter GOP of old NO longer exists replaced by greedy devious liars and crooks

Baby steps. Change is hard for any culture, and health care for all is a big one. Sad to say, the very concept is un-American. We remain, only a culture in transition. Let's tell the truth about it: from our inception, we have lived the "wild west every man for himself" ethic. Let's take a hard look in the mirror and fess up.

For women who lost their husbands in the 1800's, many, if not most, had only the options of suicide or prostitution to survive. Even in the late 1800's the rates of suicide and homicide were so high in California, residents there could not buy life insurance. As a man, had I lived then, were I facing my own untimely death, I would rather my wife and daughter lived as members of an Indian tribe, where each member's life was in fact held sacred. Obviously, the history is more complicated in the particulars, but in the general, the point is made.

Today the essence of the Republican moral code, is that the free market, whatever its determinations, (even when manipulated by Republican legislators), is Just and Right. A call to civil obligation then, even to force us to pay for health care for the hardworking poor who can't afford it - this they view as "a violation of my rights." They just don't get it. These are regular and law abiding people, honest citizens, possessed of a cruel and thoughtless world view. Just like the brave soldiers in WWII, who went to church on Sunday and kissed their wives and children goodbye in the morning, and then went off and slaughtered Jewish people all day long. In the "obvious" world-view to these soldiers "it was only awful Jews after all." Similarly, conservatives say: "Oh those lazy freeloading poor people...they could all be rich if they only worked harder...so let's leave 'em without care and that'll teach 'em..." and they say: "lucky me I'm not them and theirs is not my problem..."

People think that the nature of 'evil' has something to do with fangs and capes and bizarre psychological maladies. This if a false perception. The 'simple and obvious' which remains 'simple and obvious' - just because it had always been a part of a culture - has ever in our history been the real villain. Only a little while ago, it was obvious to much of America that black people were less than human, and deservedly and rightly slaves. Today, much of America believes that the hardworking poor who can't afford health care, or the elderly who have done their part for America, or the young who can't yet work, are owed nothing. They believe the libertarian lie and falsity that no one member of society has a claim on another, not even by virtue of the sacredness of the human individual. They don't acknowledge or know or feel, the truely spriritual and Christian call and demand: that in this broader venture of our humanity, we survive and find all our happiness and fulfillment - together.

As I beleive, we are hearing today in the vociferous complaints of the tea partiers and the Republicans - the dying throes of an archaic world view. For my part, as a progressive - I am thrilled by the accomplishment, but still not quite proud. Regarding the precious and desperately necessary work of forwarding the evolotuion of our culture and politics, I ask myself...."Have I tried hard enough? Could I have done more?"

I remember I tried to tell myself "it will be alright" when Bush got elected. But then there was the Iraq war to save Cheney's Halliburton from bankruptcy and to fill the pockets of Bush's oil industry cronies: hundreds of thousands Iraqi's dead and a nation crumbled to ruins, and a trillion dollars of our money wasted. And there was the crashed world economy - by Greenspan's libertarian zealotry which let the banks do just whatever they wanted - and by Dugan's OCC lawsuit, ramming subprime down America's throats. And then the national debt driven sky high by a tax cut for rich people left unpaid for, and two wars left unpaid for as well..."

It was not "alright."

There remains, lifetimes of work in front of us....For now, we have to know that nothing is ever 'handled.' So cheers to all and lets have at it....

Thomas needs to go too!

The Tea Raggers got Kicked square in the Nuts today !!!

Ha Ha Ha !!!

Health Care for Everyone! That's the endgame now! If we knew more about the rest of the other world's leading countries we could understand how they have single payer health care systems and use their experience to make it work here. The book by T.R. Reid, "The Healing of America" taught me a lot about how the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Taiwan, Japan and others have done this before. Several of those countries used a Harward professor, William Hsaio, as a consultant to design their healthcare systems. It can happen here.

In the first place, single payer insurance is working extremely well for a lot of modern nations, that are shown to have a quality of care equal to ours, and at far less cost than here. Single payer was desired by a majority of American citizens AND by the medical community, of which I was a part. In a nation like ours, healthcare should be a basic right!

Now, a comment on the "Its a tax" ruling by Justice Roberts:

I believe most people would agree that individuals should be responsible to pay for the personal benefits they receive in life. Those who do not take responsibility to purchase healthcare insurance for themselves, and their families, are effectively forcing the rest of us, who have paid for our healthcare insurance, to pay for theirs. Why? Because these un-insureds still call upon hospitals and other healthcare providers to care for them. And because of the moral and ethical values these facilities hold, they will not refuse to care for someone in need, insurance or not.
When society, through its laws, requires individuals to be responsible for themselves, or pay a penalty for not taking that responsibility, it is giving the individual the "option" of either paying for their own insurance, or paying a tax to the government. They can choose either one.
So, it is not a tax in the sense of other taxes, where we have no choice as to whether to pay them. It is simply a method of saying "It is not right, or fair, for you to force me to pay for your personal healthcare."
So, the Republican stance that it raises taxes, is simply a half truth, and should not be a reason for them to try to repeal a law that helps millions of Americans, of all ages and situations. Whatever else you might think of the new law, or the Obama administration, I think you would have to agree with me on this.
Personally, I'm not as happy with the Obama administration as I could have been, had they not taken single-payer off the table at the very beginning, but a Romney administration scares the bejeebers out of me, for lots of reasons.

I agree 100% that it is time for a single payer universal plan like Medicare for All.

But I disagree with characterizing today's decision a "ruling that Congress does have the power to penalize Americans who don’t buy health insurance – which was how the individual mandate works." That characterization is the way that Congress framed the metaphor which today's decision has explicitly declared to be an illegal and wrong legal metaphor. Today's decision says that even though Congress and the President may have thought they were mandating the purchase of health insurance with a penalty for those who do not buy it, what Congress and the President actually enacted was legislation that creates a tax for health care and then provides several ways to be excluded from the tax such as purchasing health care, being low income, etc.. So, as much as it is in my mind a bad law, today's decision was a good decision on the Constitutional grounds of telling Congress, the President and the American people exactly what this Act does.

I have said since the day the Affordable Health Care Act was enacted that mandates are illegal and only taxation for health care is legal, and today the SCOTUS confirmed that view.

So it is now time for everyone in the media, blogosphere, and Main Street, to stop using the terminology of "mandate and penalty" and use the legal terminology affirmed by the Supreme Court of "taxation and tax exclusion".

Thom,

Some lessons to be learned from the ACA decision. Oral arguments are usually irrelevant. The Justices base decisions primarily on written law and precedent. The commerce clause was not the major factor in the lower courts. Roberts decision was in keeping with the Arizona decision ealier in the week where the Court held that only Congress can regulate immigration. Now, they say that Congress can, under Article I and other provisions, regulate health care if there is a national interest. Roberts decision going back to MC'culloch in 1819, was actually a conservative opinion. He found a loophole in the taxing provision but his legacy was at stake. The pundits failed to read the various decisions of the lower court. Laurence Tribe of Harvard, one of the giants in constitutional law, who taught both Obama and Roberts, predicted a 6-3 decision in favor of the ACA. I was also a classmate of Mitt Romney's in the sixties for two years. Every sentence, and I quote another, he says is a lie, including "and" and "the". Kennedy has been a Federalist in most cases but not this one.