For fifteen years, the Supreme Court has treated Obamacare like some kind of constitutional Rubik’s Cube it can’t solve, won’t solve, and keeps twisting anyway. Every few years the Justices return to it—sometimes boldly, sometimes timidly, sometimes incoherently—and every single time they leave the country more confused than before.
Think back to the individual mandate. First it was constitutional because it was a tax, even though the administration swore it wasn’t. Then, once Congress zeroed it out, the Court claimed it no longer mattered. So it was essential to the law’s survival… until it wasn’t. Only in Washington can something be both required and irrelevant at the same time. The Court tied itself in knots trying to save Obamacare without admitting it was saving it.
Then came Medicaid expansion. The Court said states had to comply—until it decided they didn’t. Overnight, something sold as “mandatory” became optional, turning low-income health care into a geographical lottery. Because when a court starts rewriting legislation instead of interpreting it, you don’t get constitutional order—you get chaos dressed up as jurisprudence.
And the subsidies? That ruling may have been the most ridiculous of all. Congress wrote that subsidies apply to exchanges “established by the States.” Federal exchanges are not state exchanges. That’s not ideology—that’s vocabulary. But the Court tossed vocabulary overboard and declared Congress “meant something else.” In what world does the Supreme Court interpret what Congress meant to write instead of what it actually wrote?
Here’s the ugly truth no one in Washington wants to say aloud: the Supreme Court has never had the courage to fully affirm Obamacare or fully dismantle it. Instead, we’ve endured a decade and a half of half-decisions, contradictions, and judicial duct tape. The result? A national health care system that exists in a constitutional twilight zone—alive, dead, essential, meaningless, depending on which Justice is in the majority that day.
Obamacare survives not because the law works, and not because Congress deliberately preserved it, but because no one in power wants to take responsibility for killing it or fixing it. And that includes the Supreme Court. The law has become a political orphan, kept breathing by Justices who don’t want the headlines that come with letting it fall.
And here’s the bottom line: you can’t run a health care system—one-sixth of the American economy—on judicial improvisation and political timidity. Businesses can’t plan. Families can’t plan. States can’t plan. And yet we are trapped inside a system that the Supreme Court itself refuses to define with finality.
This isn’t constitutional clarity.
This isn’t leadership.
This is judicial cowardice wrapped in confusion.
And the American people are still paying the price.
The Valley Viewpoint 