It’s no secret that Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion in the ObamaCare case last week is already helping President Barack Obama on the campaign trail by giving the unpopular law constitutional legitimacy.
But Fox News reports that Roberts’s opinion may also help the President make another boast: ObamaCare is a job creator.
Much bigger than the mandate itself are the insurance exchanges that will administer $681 billion in subsidies over 10 years, which will require a lot of new federal workers at the IRS and health department.
“They are asking for several hundred new employees,” Dorn said. “You have rules you need to write and you need lawyers, so there are lots of things you need to do when you are standing up a new enterprise.”
For some, though, the bottom line is clear and troubling: The federal government is about to assume massive new powers.
According to James Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, federal powers will include designing insurance plans, telling people where they can go for coverage and how much insurers are allowed to charge.
“Really, how doctors and hospitals are supposed to practice medicine,” he said.
The health department is still writing regulations, which can be controversial in and of themselves. One already written, for instance, requires insurance plans to cover contraception. It has been legally challenged by Catholic groups in a case likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
So, there are likely to be many more chapters to go in the saga of Obama’s health care law
And none of it would be possible without the Chief Justice.
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