Health Care Defines 2012 Presidential Race

This year, for the first time in many years, Pennsylvania has the chance to
be a factor in nominating a presidential candidate. The outcome of the
Pennsylvania GOP presidential primary will turn on a few key issues,
including health care.

The U.S. Supreme Court has recently heard oral arguments on a multistate
challenge to the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. The court will render a decision in
June.

The Supreme Court isn’t the only venue in which Obamacare is being argued.
Candidates for national office have been addressing Obamacare on the
campaign trail. The rhetoric will continue at least until the court speaks,
and, depending upon the justices’ decision, until the general election.

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s campaign speech at the recent
Pennsylvania Leadership Conference lacked a much-needed sense of irony. In
it, Santorum criticized a rival, former-Gov. Mitt Romney, for passage in
Massachusetts of a state health insurance plan called Romneycare. Citing
Romneycare as a model for Obamacare, Santorum told his audience that,
because of Romneycare, Romney lacks the moral authority to confront the
president and effectively oppose the highly unpopular Obamacare law during
the general election campaign.

Santorum must experience a bit of cognitive dissonance each time he makes
those claims. Surely he remembers, as we all do, that, in 2004, then-Sen.
Santorum’s enthusiastic support for Sen. Arlen Specter helped Specter to win
a close primary race over then-candidate, now-Sen. Pat Toomey, and go on to
win the general election. Subsequently a party defector, Specter cast the
Senate Democrats’ 60th vote for cloture that allowed Obamacare to pass. So,
it might be fairly said that Sen. Santorum helped to give America Obamacare.

Among the primary provisions of the law falling under the court’s
constitutional scrutiny is the individual mandate, the part that would
require individuals to purchase health insurance and punish those who do
not.

The Constitution doesn’t prohibit state mandates. If it did, speed limits,
driver’s licenses and automobile insurance would be optional. In any case,
speed limits prove the ineffectiveness of mandates. Not everyone complies.
Not all violators are caught. Speeders still reach their destinations, just
as the uninsured still receive medical care in America without Obamacare.

Though Romney accurately defends his Massachusetts plan as a state and not a
federal issue, presently, candidate Romney has no pressing need to defend or
disavow his mandate-containing state plan. If the Supreme Court overthrows
the individual mandate in Obamacare, Romney wins politically, because his
argument will gain credibility with conservative Republicans and voters at
large.

If the mandate is overturned, the other winners will be businesses, job
seekers and the economy. Businesses have been reluctant to hire new workers
because of their uncertainty about the tax, regulatory and insurance cost
burdens associated with Obamacare. An improvement in the economy could help
the president’s re-election.

But, if Obamacare fails court approval, President Obama loses immediately.
His signature piece of legislation will have been invalidated, and he will
have nothing else to show for more than three years in office other than a
slow economy, a weak dollar, a failed stimulus, a $5 trillion increase in
the national debt, his administration’s regulatory assault on American
business, inflation, high unemployment, a proposed tax on the wealthy and an
antipathy to conventional sources of energy that has contributed to high
prices for gasoline and electricity.

If Obamacare somehow passes muster in the court, the law will still be
unpopular with nearly two-thirds of Americans. Any Republican candidate has
an electoral advantage among voters that hostile to the president’s lone
major accomplishment while in office.

Jerry Shenk writes from West Hanover Twp.