It's Up to the Voters Now

The last chance to stop ObamaCare is in November

By Paul Clement

If there is a modicum of hope in Chief Justice John Roberts's inglorious one-man opinion Thursday, it is that Americans were reminded again that they cannot count on others to protect their liberty. Certainly judges aren't reliable. They can be turned by the pressure of the media and the whims of vanity. If Americans want to repeal ObamaCare, their only recourse is to demand it at the ballot box in November.

The Affordable Care Act is more unpopular now than when it passed, yet it will grind on toward implementation in a second Obama term. The President made that clear in his remarks Thursday, deploying the usual half-truths he used to jam the law through Congress. He continued to claim that no one will lose his current health insurance, though millions are sure to do so as they are dropped from business coverage and tossed into Medicaid or government exchanges.

The great irony is that Mr. Obama still couldn't bring himself to admit that the purchase mandate is a "tax," though that is the only logic by which the Chief Justice upheld it. (See above.) Mr. Obama referred to it instead with the euphemism that individuals must "take the responsibility to buy health insurance."

See nearby for examples of Democrats during the ObamaCare debate denying that this tax ever was or would be a tax. Had they called it a tax in 2009-2010, the bill would never have passed.

It is now undeniable that Mr. Obama has imposed the largest tax increase in history on the middle class. Individuals who don't buy insurance will have to pay several hundred dollars, depending on income. The Congressional Budget Office says that 76% of those who pay the mandate tax will make less than 500% of the federal poverty level, estimated to be $24,000 for a family of four in 2016. That means 76% of the payers will earn less than $120,000 a year.

So much for Mr. Obama's promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $200,000. And this initial mandate tax will only be a teaser rate when it becomes clear it isn't nearly enough either to finance the bill or drive individuals to buy insurance. Millions will wait to buy insurance until they need expensive treatment, knowing they can always buy it when they show up at the hospital.

Meanwhile, the law's new rules are already spreading through the health system—12,000 Federal Register pages and counting—and private insurance premiums are starting to climb as a result. Rates rose 9% last year, or by $1,200 for the average American family, and ObamaCare will send them higher. ObamaCare also forms over 150 new boards with power over the health markets, in particular an unaccountable bureaucracy run by 15 solons who will eventually decide on the treatments that patients are allowed to receive.

The great liberal gamble has been that all of this will be forgiven or forgotten once the bill's insurance subsidies start to flow in 2014. They are estimated to run $1.762 trillion over 10 years and grow by 8% a year, a conservative estimate that assumes costs don't explode—which they will.

These subsidies are the heart of the bill and the soul of its ideological project to hook the middle class on "free" health care. The bet is that once an entitlement is in place, it is forever—as in Europe.

This is the prize that Mr. Obama and Nancy Pelosi thought was worth risking their Congressional majorities for—worth even the risk of a weaker economic recovery that could cost Mr. Obama the election. And as we are now learning in a variety of books, this is the reason that Mr. Obama ignored advice from Rahm Emanuel to focus above all on the economy and wait on health care. This is Mr. Obama's dream of expanding government to create a permanent entitlement state.

And it is a dream that will become reality unless the voters deny Mr. Obama another four years. Mitt Romney seemed to grasp this point in his remarks on Thursday, noting that "If we want to get rid of ObamaCare, we're going to have to replace President Obama."

The presumptive GOP nominee may have thought he could run solely on the economy, but now ObamaCare must be central to his campaign. He is at a disadvantage on the mandate tax because he supported a similar levy in Massachusetts—which may be why he failed to mention it Thursday. But there is so much more to dissect and educate the public about, if Mr. Romney and his advisers have the wit and nerve to do so.

As for the American people, this is another moment to recall Benjamin Franklin's admonition upon the signing of the Constitution. They had created "a republic, sir—if you can keep it."