by Jeremy Leaming
As the Supreme Court justices near a decision on whether to grant review of a legal challenge to the Obama administration’s landmark health care reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a potentially persuasive path for addressing the matter has emerged for the high court’s conservative wing, Simon Lazarus writes for Slate.
Lazarus, public policy counsel for the National Senior Citizens Law Center, takes a closer look at this week’s opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, noting that the majority opinion written by Reagan-appointee Judge Laurence H. Silberman “directly confronted the challenge to the individual mandate [the ACA’s integral provision requiring individuals to carry health care insurance starting in 2014], and rejected it outright. That’s a formidable statement from a conservative icon – and a warning shot to the justices of the Supreme Court.”
Silberman’s opinion has grabbed attention because of his conservative bona fides, but Lazarus says the real power behind it rests on the methodology used to dismantle opponents’ arguments against the law.
