The Real Winners in The Supreme Court Decision

President Obama won a political battle but the real winners are Americans who will now have access to healthcare.  It will also help those who receive healthcare, through their employment, but who face the risk of losing their coverage if they lose their jobs.

The politics will continue leading up the the November elections.  The GOP will be running against the ACA.  Mitt Romney announced that he would work to repeal the law if he were elected.  He made many false claims about the bill in his announcement that will be part of his misinformation campaign.  Now that the constitutionality of the bill is no longer an issue, the Democrats will be more vigorous in pointing out how the bill will benefit millions of Americans.  A small majority of Americans do not like the bill, but that includes 15% of Americans who would have liked a stronger bill.  They would have preferred extending Medicare, which provides coverage to senior citizens, to all Americans. That was not politically possible in face of opposition from insurance companies and the GOP, but the ACA is a big step forward.  The hard core GOP base will rally against the ACA, but if the Democrats do their job well, they should be able to counter the disinformation campaign by the GOP.  After all, the basic structure of the ACA was developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation as an alternative to a single payer plan like Medicare for all Americans.  Mitt Romney passed a similar bill in Massachusetts. GOP leaders are defending his Massachusetts bill on the grounds that residents of Massachusetts, who do not like the bill, are free to migrate to another state.  That has not happened in Massachusetts, and the inability of Americans, who don't like the bill, to emigrate from the US, is weak argument against the federal bill which applies to all Americans.