Terminal or Curable

The judge rejected the Obama administration’s argument that since virtually everyone must eventually make use of health care, and hospitals are required to treat all in need of emergency care, the uninsured impose costs on the entire health system. He dismissed the notion that the federal government could prohibit citizen “inactivity”—such as not buying insurance. But he refused to strike down the new law in its entirety or to order that it should not be implemented pending appeal.
That, supporters of the health law insist, means the show will go on. The individual mandate was not supposed to come into effect until 2014 in any case, they argue, by which time this judgment may well have been overturned. Meanwhile, they intend to forge ahead with new health-insurance exchanges, curbs on bad behaviour by insurers and other provisions of the new law. They hope this will give the reforms an air of inevitability.
In fact, a mood of uncertainty seems more likely. For one thing, of the two dozen or so cases pending against Obamacare, this is the first to go against the administration. (Two earlier cases, ruled on by liberal judges in Virginia and Michigan, went in favour of the law.) Later this week a federal judge in Florida is expected to hear arguments in the most important such case, a joint action involving 20 states; like Mr Hudson, he is a conservative. It seems very likely that the Supreme Court will have to decide the matter, and that could take two years or more. This ruling, and any similar ones to come, may also provide useful ammunition for Republicans in Congress to carry out their plan to obstruct the implementation of the law by cutting funding, using procedural manoeuvres and so on.