Some good reads on the recent decision by SCOTUS to uphold almost all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:

Update 7/12/12

Why Won’t Obama Sell His Health-Care Plan Now That It’s Been Upheld?

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that the legislation is now viewed less negatively than it was before the court ruling, with 47 percent supporting the law and 47 percent opposing it. In April only 39 percent backed the Affordable Care Act while 53 percent opposed it, suggesting that voters are beginning to connect the dots of positive health-care benefits—such as keeping adult children on their policy until age 26—with the new law.(emphasis mine)

I really like the idea for a new ad:

"Simplicity is the key, says Melody Miller, Ted Kennedy’s spokeswoman for much of his long crusade for health-care reform. She proposes an ad with two hands, one that ticks off finger by finger five reasons to support the law; the other a fist that unfolds to reveal “Obamacare, health-care security for all,” written on the palm. “The truth” about Obamacare, says a narrator:

(1) can’t be denied coverage for preexisting conditions;

(2) no cap, you won’t get cut off or lose your home if you have costly medical bills;

(3) reduces the deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office;

(4) you can keep children on until age 26;

(5) you can keep your own doctor and choose your own coverage from a variety of plans, just like members of Congress."

Attempting to explicitly debunk the many many outrageous falsehoods (and outright lies) spread by the GOP about ObamaCare may be too complicated and ultimately put Democrats on the defensive. A simple attractive commercial like this can both introduce people to the benefits of ObamaCare and implicitly debunk some of those GOP-created falsehoods.

Many Americans still don't know what's in new health law

Americans are still highly misinformed about what is in the healthcare law.

WP Fact Checker: "The health law, if it works as the nonpartisan government analysts expect, will provide more tax relief than tax burden for middle-income Americans."

GOP Health Care Plan Is Still a Dud

Again, tort reform will not significantly decrease healthcare costs.

Original Post

Greg Largent: Republicans support Obama’s health reforms — as long as his name isn’t on them

The new Reuters-Ipsos poll finds that Obamacare remains deeply unpopular; 56 percent of Americans oppose the law, versus only 44 percent who favor it. The poll also finds that strong majorities of Americans favor the individual provisions in the law -- the hated individual mandate excepted, of course. What’s particularly interesting about this poll is that solid majorities of Republicans favor most of the law’s main provisions, too.(emphasis mine)

The One-Sided War Against Obamacare

In all, about $235 million has been spent on ads attacking the law since its passage in March 2010...

By contrast, only $69 million has been spent on pro-Obamacare ads, most of it bland public-service spots from HHS. Add to that the fact that most Democrats seem petrified of actually defending the law, and it's no surprise that the Fox News portrayal of Obamacare has been steadily gaining ground. That's what happens when you slink into a corner when the other guys declare war.(emphasis mine)

WP Fact Checker: Sarah Palin, ‘Death Panels’ and ‘Obamacare’

Palin is seizing on a completely different entity to justify her provocative use of the phrase “death panel” three years ago. But the IPAB in no way resembles the “death panel” that she claims would decide whether her parents or her baby with Down Syndrome are worthy of care. Instead, it is a tool—subject to oversight and approval by Congress—to try to rein in the soaring cost of Medicare.

Did Scalia Scare Off Roberts?

"Any objective legal observer would tell you (and I'm trying to be one here) that the dissent's treatment of the severability issue is detached from 200 years of constitutional law. It's unsupported legally and it's a mess logically. It also includes a citation to a quote that Harry Reid gave to the New York Times in Janauary 2010 concerning the bill --- this from at least two justices (Scalia and Thomas) who routinely say that any use of legislative history is a sham because it's necessarily incomplete. One wonders what a quote not uttered on the floor of Congress but to a journalist would constitute in that case? In any event, rather than holding the mandate costitutional and those portions of the bill inextricably linked with it (guaranteed issue/community rating), four members of the Court were primed to throw the whole bill out. That level of judicial activism, in a context like this one, would be nearly unprecedented."(emphasis mine)

The GOP has once again chosen two mutually exclusive complaints about ObamaCare.

"Well, the Supreme Court said today that the health care mandate is ok. I am no constitutional scholar, but from what I can tell from the news reports, the Court's logic is similar to mine in this old blog post." - Greg Mankiw, Advisor to Mitt Romney