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ANALYSIS
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's landmark legislation on health care reform, vaulted the controversial law back into the national spotlight. But with a still anemic economic picture dominating most voters' concerns, will the Affordable Care Act still be an issue in November?
Conservative Catholics seem especially motivated by the issue of religious liberty, and their principal focus has been on the provision of the law that allows the Department of Health and Human Services to mandate insurance coverage for certain procedures, like contraception, to which the church objects. Liberal Catholics, as evidenced by the attention generated by the "Nuns on the Bus" tour, are especially concerned about defending social justice programs, with the Affordable Care Act representing the fulfillment of a generations-long struggle to enact universal health care. And what about those Catholic swing voters who hold the balance of voting power in such key battleground states as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia?
The court ruling was itself a source of some confusion. It was not, in fact, a 5-4 decision, but a 4-1-4 decision in which Chief Justice John Roberts issued the "controlling opinion" because he reached the same result as the court's four liberal justices. But his reasoning was different from theirs and also different from the reasoning put forward by the court's four conservative justices in their dissent. Interestingly, Roberts was the only justice who said the individual mandate, requiring all those who decline to purchase insurance to pay a penalty, was a tax. The four liberals said it was a justified penalty under the Commerce Clause and the conservatives argued that it was an unjustified penalty that violated the Commerce Clause. Only Roberts said the penalty passed constitutional muster under Congress' taxing authority.
Most analysts agree that the Supreme Court decision was key to Obama's re-election prospects. "Take a moment and imagine what it would be like for Obama had it gone the other way," said Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. "Dead man walking. Romney saying this was all about the constitutionality of [the Affordable Care Act]. Et cetera....