It is a very flawed system, but it's still a step in the direction of civilization. The giveaways to insurance companies and pharmaceuticals will have to cut, though, for it to survive. With this win, Obama is on his way to reelecion and whatever chaos the retrograde republican ayatollahs throw at him.

Republicans would have us believe this is bad for America. Is there any doubt that a Romney administration would favor the rich and increase the income gap in our country while leaving millions of our citizens uninsured and unprotected? Mitt is a pariah in Mormon Clothing and will stop at nothing to expand an empire of greed for the rich in this country. Can his sacred Mormon underwear gain him enough donations to buy this election? See for yourself as Mitt dons his tighty-whities sent from the Good Lord Himself at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/05/mitt-romneys-magic-mormon-und...

Why is anyone surprised at this ruling? Supreme Court Justices do sometimes have prior judicial experience, but they are party machine appointees who would never let principled zeal overcome tactical sense. Strike down the other lot's flagship policy, and they will do the same to yours once the opportunity presents itself. Heaven and earth were always going to be moved in order to rule that, whatever else it might be, ObamaCare was not unconstitutional. So it has been.

Romney has no meaningful intention of repealing something that he pretty much invented, anyway. His nomination confirms that, for all the noise from Tea Parties and what have you, the thing that still purports to be conservatism in post-Dubya America is in reality a very small minority concern even among registered Republicans. The result of the primary process speaks for itself. The older school of Eisenhower Republicans will have two candidates out of two in November. Call it ObamaCare, call it RomneyCare, call it anything you like: it is a classic piece of Eisenhower-Nixon-Ford-Bush I Republicanism. America could do with a great deal more such pieces. And the world could do with such an America.

Give it five years - and regardless of the results in November, it will still be there in five years' time - and Americans will wonder how they ever got by without it, if they are still thinking about it at all. The only reform demanded by the public, or suggested by anyone beyond the outermost fringe, will be a move to the Canadian single-payer system (basically, the NHS) advocated by Donald Trump, because it would be so much less bureaucratic while retaining the principle of universal coverage paid for out of general taxation. That principle will be as universal as the coverage, within five years.

This is also a pro-life victory. A ban on abortion funding was already written into the original legislation, but if this is a tax rather than a commercial purchase then the provisions of the Hyde Amendment also apply, putting the belt and braces on it. Precisely because this is now recognised as taxation, the contraceptive mandate will also almost certainly either be struck down in the courts or legislated away in order to pre-empt such an action.

But we had the NHS a generation before either the Pill or abortion, and they have much tighter abortion laws on much of the Continent alongside, indeed built into, universal public healthcare. So all of that was and is peripheral, if that, to the principle. And the principle has now been established.

This Nov election just became about 0bama-care... CJ Roberts just cranked things up x 10 & ensured a GOP Prez victory. Buckle up...