Letters: Health care ruling cheers, jeers

As a 2005 Sachem High School graduate and fourth-year student at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, I was thrilled to see the Supreme Court uphold the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ["Now the law of the land," Editorial, June 29].

I have seen firsthand the challenges patients face in navigating a complex health care system and the frustrations physicians experience in trying to care for our uninsured population.

Our work is not done. On Long Island, we are more fortunate than most to have high rates of health insurance. But, in 2014, when 32 million Americans gain health insurance, doctors and hospitals will work hard to integrate these new patients into the health care system and innovate new models to provide better care.

We must look forward, not backward. The gains made as a result of the Affordable Care Act are important and historic. Today, we celebrate that our nation has finally made a commitment to providing health care to even the most vulnerable: the poor, the young adults, and those with pre-existing conditions.

I pledge to continue the work of ensuring that everyone in America has access to lifesaving medications, quality preventive health care, and a meaningful, personal relationship with a physician.

Anirudh Ramesh, Baltimore
 

The republic as we knew it has died. The five judges who voted in favor of President Barack Obama's "affordable" health care should all be hauled away to jail.

Why? The United States of America was formed by those who objected to taxation by the government and gave power to the people. With this ruling, the Constitution was killed. Congress now controls the people.

To those who celebrate the passage of Obama health care, your celebration will be short-lived. Taxes and health care rationing have not taken full effect yet, but they will and when they do, it will be too late.

Congress can now decide that anything that they deem good for the people will become law, and if you don't comply, you will be taxed. Are you frightened yet?

Rosalie Hanson, Medford
 

"Senator, think of it as a tax." The setting was a meeting in early 1994 between Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), a couple of his legislative aides, including myself, and one of President Bill Clinton's top strategists for his health care reform bill. The meeting had been set up in Levin's office to give him a fuller understanding of the mechanics and rationale of the Clinton health care package.

Levin, as usual, was asking probing questions about the many technical aspects of the bill. He wanted to be supportive but was having difficulty following what appeared to many people as the convoluted financing mechanism of the Clinton bill. In good-natured frustration, a Clinton strategist finally said, "Senator, think of it as a tax," which was an enormous intellectual concession because the Clinton administration had wanted to call the key financing aspect of his bill anything but a highly politically vulnerable tax.

Now, flash forward 18 years. Among the questions floating in the air the morning of June 28 were, will the Supreme Court find the Obama health care reform a valid exercise of the congressional power via the interstate commerce clause? Will the Supreme Court be willing to reverse such a huge presidential initiative in the context of a presidential campaign?

Who would have thought that they would be answered similar to those words uttered 18 years earlier by a strategist for another president? Chief Justice Roberts is right: It is a tax.

Chuck Cutolo, Westbury

Editor's note: The writer was the legislative director for Sen. Carl Levin in 1994. He is currently the general counsel for governmental and media relations at Nassau Community College.
 

I am disgusted by the Supreme Court. This court has been astonishingly activist in major cases, including the recent decision eviscerating Arizona's immigration law. And now, in a legal system where much can hinge on technicalities, the court turned itself inside out to correct the administration's own long-standing claims that the law was not a tax, but a penalty, thus granting the decision. Democrats must be thrilled that dishonesty and evasion pays dividends.

In these cases, court members contorted the law to support their own political views. Maybe it's time these Supreme Court justices were elected instead of appointed.

I hope liberals don't crow too loudly about their recent victories. Supreme Court members are not gods, and are not always right. After all, this is the body that decided that Dred Scott could remain a slave.

The people will remember who betrayed them when they vote in November.

Leslie Dimmling, Garden City
 

How much silliness must one society be forced to endure? What's all the fuss about the new health law? I don't know what the alleged loopholes or overreaches might be.

All those opposed to the Affordable Care Act should ask the people in general if they agree or disagree. Ask that little old lady who just fell and broke her hip. Ask that little toddler suffering from autism. That's where the true answers lie.

Moultgrie L. Lowery, Cambria Heights
 

Nick Gillespie's column, "Court doesn't change history" [Opinion, June 29] is so palpably ridiculous that its argument can be destroyed in only two words: Bush v Gore. The history of the United States was changed in so many ways by that decision.

The economic, environmental, military, social, partisan, international and undemocratic turns this country has taken as a result of this most injudicious decision are all irreparable -- whether you are for them or against them.

Ruth Karter, Floral Park