A US District Judge in Vriginia has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the Obama Health Care Law to require individuals to purchase health insurance.
This decision will certainly be appealed to the US Federal Appellate Court system and then arrive at the US Supreme Court, probably bundled together with several other lower federal court decisions.
Obamacare is a controversial law. It not only requires individuals to buy health care insurance or pay fines, it also requires every state to accept its provisions, and pay for many of them, even if a state cannot pay without "unbalancing" its state budget. And, it interferes with health care systems already in place that cover the employees of private companies.
You can bet that these, and other, major provisions will be tested in federal courts, and some of the provisions will be found unconstitutional. Whether the US Supreme Court will find compelling reasons to force states and individuals to accept all the provisions of Obamacare is not clear, but it seems that if individuals are finally deemed not to be required to purchase health insurance, it will put a hole in the financial scheme of the law and make it likely that other provisions will not be able to be funded.
Add to this the fact that Congress forgot to put a key provision in the bill that became law, one that would have allowed courts to separate out unconstitutional sections while saving valid provisions and permitting Congress to replace the tainted clauses with ones that conform to the Supreme Court's decisions.
Obamacare is not "in the bag" yet, and it never will be in its present form.
With the GOP soon to take control of the House of Representatives, it seems unlikely that the President will find a friendly hearing if he tries to correct the mistakes in the current law. This is not so much because the GOP wants to oppose every move the President makes, but because the GOP and more than half of Americans have always opposed Obamacare as being too expensive and putting powers into the hands of the federal government that would be better left to the states.
This is one political battle that will be very long and unpleasant for President Obama.
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